About being a parent...

Oh those precious moments of insight when being a parent allows me to ponder over myself ;)
I became a mother rather late in life, when I honestly did not expect it to happen. I was 34 when my first pregnancy occurred, but this one was quickly over, lots of tears, despair and sadness following it, and an excruciatingly difficult procedure in a hospital. They called it "missed abortion", and what it means is simply that the fetus died at a very early stage and had to be removed.
Our first son was born two years later, and our second one five years and two weeks after the first one. You can count the years yourselves... The oldest son is now 9.5 years old.

The children are growing and leaving more and more space for my personal life. The baby time is over, the sleepless nights are history, and I finally have space to develop my own world once again. But everything is different this side of parenthood.

Before becoming a parent I lived a pretty happy-go-lucky lifestyle, tending only to me and my husband, who pretty much was taking care of himself. Children changed everything, throwing me from my own pedestal and making me put them on it. Children are demanding, selfish and precious. They are pretty, too, luckily for them, because life with children is not always pretty itself.

Anyway - as I look at it today - my life changed and became enriched, first by changing the focus of my priorities, and later by multiplying the points of view and needs by 3, plus my husband's.

My sons are growing and putting on their own personalities more and more. They simply are individuals with their own lives, interests and longings. At the same time, their lives are intertwined with my life, closer at some points, and more casually at some others. The connections will loosen up, children will become adults, and the separation is unavoidable some day. What I pray for is that there still will be some thread between us, some connection between me and them, in form of a word or of a gesture, in a form of some subliminal understanding, the likeness of spirit, LOVE.

What I also pray for is that they will know God and give their lives to Him. This pedestal thing - it is no longer me, and no longer my children on it - the Honor and Glory is only to Christ. For in Him and by Him we live and prosper, and to Him we are going. Children and parents, all.