Guilt

I have been praying for over a year now, asking God to help me let go of this guilt.  I’ve been asking myself over and over again, what I could have done differently, to help him.  What could I have done differently to make his life better?  Should I have sought more help?  Should I have been a stay at home mom?  Did I work too much?  Was I in the wrong relationship?  Did he not have enough positive role models in his life?

Well, today I had a profound revelation; I DID NOTHING WRONG.  I did everything that I could for him and I am a damn good mother!  I couldn’t have worked to hard, because I had two other children to care for. I disciplined him when I should have; I sought the help that school counselors told me that he needed.  I prayed, I kept him in church, I sent him away to military boot camp.  What else could I have done?  Nothing.

I worked my butt off to keep a roof over my children’s head, food in their mouth and clothes on their backs.  They may not have had every name -brand clothing known to man, but they dressed nice and they were always clean.  I did my very best as a single mother, to never have to live in the ghetto: so that they wouldn’t have to fight their way to school every day, have freedom to walk to the neighborhood store, or be able to play freely in the park.

It was nothing that I did wrong, it was the life that he chose to live and the type of friends that he chose to be involved with.  What he’s going thru now, I have no doubt that God will bring him out, but this is a lesson for him to learn and not a punishment for me.  It took me a long time to realize that, but I finally did.

For every single mother out there that may have a troubling child, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.  If you have done everything that you could, rest easy.  There are some things that people (children) have to go through in order to have a testimony for their adult lives.  Don’t let your child guilt you into feeling like you weren’t or aren’t a good parent.  He use to try and do that to me, saying that I loved the other two more than I loved him.  I honestly allowed that to affect me.  NO MORE.  I love all my kids the same.  I won’t do for one that I won’t do for the other and they all know that.  I bend over backwards for every single child that I gave birth to (and some I didn’t).

So today, I am free of the guilt. And you should be too.

-COCO-