I’ve been a single-parent since I was 19 years old and I am now with 4 children and approaching 40’s door. In living, I’ve learned to survive. I’ve been busy doing it all these years, but how to thrive, well that has eluded me. Recently, one of my twin sons said yes to drugs and he was on his way to saying yes to a gang. We’re on his third suspension and second school hearing and I find myself asking why with a face drowned in tears of hurt and shame on the drive home from school. “Have I not taught you better,” I screamed at him. “What were you thinking?” Curse words seem to fly out of my mouth like vomit. Oh not the scrawny curse words, but the very robust ones came hurling out of my mouth. As a Christian mother… well, I had no thoughts as a Christian mother at that time. There were only the thoughts of a fearful, angry and oh so needing help with this wayward child – mother.
But given more time by God to repent and reflect I realize that my inability to thrive all these years has caused my love to be bottled up. Children and parents need more than survival. To remain alive gives us only the barest of necessities. What my children and I desperately needed was not just to stay alive but to grow vigorously together, to flourish in love; to enjoy life. What I failed to consistently remember is that everything I experienced or didn’t experience as a single mother, my children experienced or failed to experience.
My son was reaching for the kind of life that he thought would cause him to thrive. He was grasping for the kind of life that deceitfully promised prosperity and enjoyment. And what could I say, could I honestly present evidence that I’d shown a different kind of life to him. Yes, we went to church every Sunday, we prayed together every morning, we went on a family vacations once a year, but was there a daily dose of enjoying life on even the smallest level or was I in survival mode: working full-time to pay the bills and too tired full-time to do any extra. Unfortunately, the latter is what I recalled.
My life and the lives of my children have been in a bottle for years. No longer do I wish to be surrounded by a boundary of glass of my own making or capped off by my own hand. The thing that makes this boundary so cruel is not just that you’re trapped inside, but you still see the possibility of prosperity: prosperity not in material things, but in love, wise choices and freedom from the vices of this world. Today I remove the cap of love and life fulfilled that I’ve bottled up because of fear of hurt, fear of being taken advantage of and fear of failing that I’ve acquired through merely surviving and I pour out all of myself so that my heart and those of my children can finally know what it is to live a legal life uncapped.
Liev Love 