I miss my son. I miss our alone times together. I miss the way we used to snuggle and give butterfly kisses at bedtime and other times and just be silly together. I miss doing homework with him. I miss making his bowl of Cheerios and putting sugar on it for him. I miss the way he used to come home from school and say, "Hey mom, will you make your Famous Chili for me". I miss the times he did crazy things to me, like "Let's go out for donuts, mom", and me the fool, believing he meant Shipley's and all the while he had other mischievous plans in store for me. I miss the day my little 8 year old boy rang the doorbell and when I opened the front door, he was holding a dead squirrel in one hand, a b.b. gun in the other and with tender tears of regret running down his face, he cried and confessed to me, "I thought killing an animal would be fun, but it wasn't"; and he let me comfort him. I even miss the "bandaide" times with my son..the times that the snips and snails and puppy dog tails would visit my world with cuts and bruises and dog bites and near overdoses on baby aspirin and putting a screwdriver into the wall socket and various hockey injuries...I miss my little son. He is all grown up and more than happily married now. He lives too far away to visit very often. Now, when I do see him on those rare and precious occasions, I am thankful for each and every nano-second. I drink up his voice and I capture his smell and I hold it all in my heart until the next precious visit comes. One of those visits will be tomorrow at our family reunion. I exhort you, drink up all these precious moments with your child, now. Store up photographs in your heart and mind for a near and coming bittersweet day when he is no longer your little boy, but he is a handsome and caring and strong man who loves the outdoors with a passion, who loves to hunt and fish and dress up in camo and lay stealth in the bushes before dawn, as still as a picture, for a cause he enjoys. He has an amazing wife he is madly in love with and who works together with him every day and plays together with him every weekend. He is a son who has inherited the joy and desire of his heart to live on a lake with a boat and a fishing pier. A son who turned out to be everything I had prayed he would be, and more than I could have imagined, which is exactly the way it should be, and I wouldn't change a thing; which is what makes the bitter sweet. But for all of this, God help me, I still miss my son.
WHAT IS YOUR FEAR AND IS IT HINDERING YOUR PROGRESS TO A GOAL?
Friday, October 01, 2010
I have felt fear over many things in my life, even about losing weight (see the blog I posted called "THE MIRROR OF TRUTH". Fear can trip you up and keep you from the very things you desire to have or do. My dear husband had a great desire for the two of us to get certified for SCUBA. But I was terrified of deep water and wouldn't even go into the deep end of a swimming pool, much less an ocean! But, because I loved my husband and I truly wanted to be free of this paralyzing thief of joy, I faced the fear and learned that the lie I was believing was, "If you get in water over your head, you will drown". I easily believed that lie, because when I was 9 years old, my brother who was just being a silly kid, stood on top of me in a pool and held me under until I almost drowned. When I took that fear to God a couple of years ago, He told me something very approximate to this: "You didn't drown because I didn't allow it, and I am with you still. Have no fear". The next thing I knew, I was in the deep end of a friend's pool while another friend taught me to tread water. The next week I was enrolled in a SCUBA diving certification class with my husband, and we both got certified. That is just one of the fears God helped me overcome.
I have come to fear God. I used to fear people more than God, but now I fear God more than people. He takes care of all my other fears. This has been a long and intentional process. I have learned that Fear is a liar & Perfect Love casts it out. I wasn't always in this place of being free of fear, so I can totally relate to anyone still being hindered by fear.
I don't believe I would be accomplishing this new found weight loss success, if the fears I believed about myself were not exposed and exchanged for truth. Everyday I am thankful for this. Now my question to you, my friends, is this: Do you sense that there is something holding you back from reaching your goals? Is it some kind of fear based thinking? Go ahead and look inside and see. If so, expose it for the enemy it is to you and replace it with the truth. You are so worth it! God bless you!