Family

My nephew is moving out/getting kicked out. Those of you with teenagers in pain know what I mean - when the battle escalates and the movement just happens. It doesn't much matter who decided what, it just is...

So yet another child in my family turns to drugs for salvation. But they are choosing death, not life. My God, it seems like almost everyone of this generation has walked this path. Grace and three of her cousins to date. Only one has avoided it. His answer was to join the Marines and head to battle next month. Meanwhile the rest of us rail against the evil, but it's like we flail our arms and punch the air. We divorce, and have affairs and seem to hate our lives and those around us - and expect that our kids will somehow become angels.

I see the beginnings in Melody. Her sullen moods, her disdain for me, how she so quickly runs from anything painful or frightening. I want so much to protect her, to fix her or feed her a bunch of information so she'll choose right, or control everything for her...

Yet I know the best thing I can do by far is to model health for her. I don't have any idea what that looks like most days. I am getting better at recognizing what it is not. I guess that's progress - to know what choices not to make.  Just to stand still and wait until the right choice becomes clear. One baby step at a time with lots of waiting in between. Excruciating for someone like me who avoids pain with busyness, who builds their worth around how well they perform. Somehow that seems to fit, doesn't it? Walking a completely new path...

May this new path bring healing to my family as well. It's all I can do. I know the old path leads to only more destruction. I watch and wait and pray - for me and Grace and Melody and hubby and my brother and his wife and my nephew and his sisters and on and on and on...