Several months ago, I was led to write a post about my challenge with controlling my ridiculous temper. A temper, which morphed into some sort of tornadic, inner struggle that could best be depicted by this:
To catch you all up - it was a soccer game...a parent, standing behind me with a small group of fellow parents, was making extremely negative and mocking comments about certain players. Mostly mine. Especially mine. It took every ounce of self-control to maintain myself. I ended up a physical mess from it. And now you're up to speed ;)
I am no surprise to myself, people. I'm well aware of my biggest challenges. My temper has always been #1. I've written before about my fight/flight mechanism being broken, thereby stuck on "fight". With God's help - or at least with what I have turned over to Him - I've made great strides in...keeping it classy. By His grace. But there is so much work yet to do...
So anyway, I've just been made aware that my son will have greater interaction with the person I had written about back in September. Admittedly, as I read this, my right eye began to twitch to the point where I wondered if I had misread the webpage. Alas, the eye stabilized, but the information did not change. I could feel that 'thing' I get in my chest start up. The heat rose into my face. I turned to look at my son, who was peacefully reading, feet up on table, cat draped on his shoulder. And the fight switch flipped.
"Nah. I'm gonna get in between him and the situation. Totally gonna..."
I began to construct an email to see if I could make a change. But? As I typed with "totally gonna" fingers, which are definitely sans dexterity, something stopped me. Well, aside from the overflow of right hand tremors and resulting typos.
Over the past couple of months or so, my son has surprised us in big ways with stepping outside of his comfort zone in the pursuit of...growth. No really, he's literally said, upon making a decision (ie. to try out for the school play), "...because it will help me grow." He is no surprise to himself. He knows his biggest challenges. He wants to overcome them. He has come to embrace the things we've said to him, one of which was, "we don't grow when we stay comfortable". Comfort, for him, is withdrawing from situations. So he's been praying for strength, right? And God is totally setting thing after thing in front of him as opportunities to grow in his faith walk.
But there I was. Typing. Typo'ing. Twitching. Totally gonna.
...which makes me a hypocrite.
I write this post with great humility and in a spirit of confession - both maternal and "I'm trying to grow in my walk with the Lord" confession. I nearly got in the way! It's no accident that things have lined up the way they have. Even if it goes horribly wrong, because I'm really good at thinking that way right off the bat, God will be in it. And maybe? It will go horribly right. Maybe this person will come to see my son's willingness to try his best out there. Maybe this person will come to understand that he doesn't particularly like the sport, but he plays it because, and I quote, "it helps me grow". After every single season, he's told me he's not going to play again. When registration opens, he tells me to sign him up. Because? He wants to grow.
So let him grow, self. God's in the details. Stand down. Step aside. 'Git out the way. This inner swirl of "fight" that kicks up and turns into something that has to be managed like-stuffing-a-hurricane-into-a-bottle is only appropriate and helpful when it comes to one thing: Fighting MS. Aside from that? It kinda has no place.
"Let the message of Christ dwell richly" is the goal...not "let the big bad wolf (as depicted in son's drawing from grade school, which he drew for one of his evaluations, no less - and boy was THAT an interesting conversational piece with the therapist) step in and right the ship that hath not yet been wronged"
Humbling myself before all of you and the Lord. Sharing my weaknesses to draw on His strength. Not ashamed to put myself out there and look pretty silly in the process, because my #2 biggest struggle? Is anxiety. And I often get super anxious when I show my vulnerabilities. And what makes me feel most vulnerable? MS and the majority of its symptoms. It all ties together. In my hole-filled head, at least :)
No comments:
Post a Comment