The internet is an amazing place to find others with common interests, common backgrounds, common occupations, common habits, common...oh, you get the picture. You can find some great laughs, some great stories, some great teaching aids, some great recipes, etc etc etc. Those tubes can dispense some remarkable information.
But it's also a place where fear lurks. Where you can read about horrifying human rights violations. Or about someone who is experiencing a disfiguring disease. Or someone who sows hatred wherever possible. Or about someone who has lost their young child.
Right now I'm brought very low with remorse over my recent self-named 'escapes' from my kids. I've had a night away with my husband, going out on a friend's boat out in Prince William Sound (yes it was fun), and I was gone most of the day today, first on a walk with one friend and then to town to 'play' with another before she leaves for medical school. And you know what? I thoroughly enjoyed being on my own, no kids in sight, no potty training stress, no toddlers pulling on my shirt and calling out "mama!" One might even say I reveled in it. Of course, you say, that's how it should be. A little time away from the kids is a good thing. Some time to yourself is 'earned' and needed and should be sought out and savored.
But I've just finished reading a blog of a family that lost a young child, a son not yet two, within the last few days. Inexplicably, their little boy died sometime in the night and they found him, lifeless, that horrifying morning. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain they are feeling. The dizzying sorrow that has invaded their house. And their sweet boy was a twin. Something that hits even harder at my heart, if that's possible.
And I find myself feeling guilty. For wanting to be away from my kids, those precious gifts that God gave us to raise and cherish. For wanting to have some 'me' time, time to be selfish and carefree. For wanting to be away instead of here. For not wanting to spend every moment I possibly can, drinking in their curiosity and their silliness and their interactions and their conversations and their dreams and their hopes and their beauty and their being.
I know. It's silly and not a little pointless to take all that on. But the fear that 'it could happen to me' is real and I'm feeling it. The thought of losing any of my children makes my heart constrict in my chest and my eyes well up with tears. How the hell is it that I can take them so for granted? Those smart, funny, beautiful children that light up my life? How?
Forgive me, Father, for being so careless with your gifts. And help me to always be thankful for those gifts. Each and every precious one.
I've had this comment in my head for two days- always very well written in the middle of the night! The jist is this.......If you don't take the "me" time, then when you need the strength to deal with the shit in life, you are not strong enough. Please don't feel guilty! I did some for the same reasons, but as your friend with the child who died knows....life is too short. We need the time for recharging, so that we can appreciate more the time we have with them.
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