Parenting the Minefield

Three weeks since I last blogged here and on my writing blog, of course I have been really busy with the review site TheKylieVerse.

Miss 3 has recovered well from her surgery and is very glad to be back at school, now other issues have surfaced. She is getting quite physical and has been told on more than several occasions to not hit her sister. We've gone down the 'not bullying' path and the 'it's not nice' path and yet sometimes she just goes back to that default setting. It's at times like that when I really wonder just how bad a parent I am.

Then I remember that parenting is a bit like walking through a minefield. You can never quite always know where the problems are going to explode. It would of course be so much easier if we did. She is strong and stubborn and won't be cowed by anyone which will be great traits for her to grow in to, if we can encourage her the right way.

This of course is also one of the joys of parenting - watching them grow and finding the little things they excel at and then hopefully finding ways to encourage those traits. Having said that Miss 8 has just decided she is going to be a tattoo artist. We went out and added different colours to her tattoo pen collection - I wonder if that makes us good or bad parents?

Thankfulness and Hard Times

This week has been intense for me for various reasons. In fact the last few weeks have been tough. Rejection (a constant in two areas I'm passionately pursuing) has been there, as well as struggling with the play I was rehearsing (we opened last night), and the looming surgery for my baby, as well as a bunch of junk going on with work.

The biggest thing without question has been the surgery. My daughter has been waiting for it for 18 months - they messed up at the hospital which set us back twelve months. Sure the surgery is pretty standard but there is always a risk with any surgery. It was hard walking out of the surgery once she had been put under but that was nothing compared to seeing her post-op with blood around her mouth and ear. She looked so tiny, so fragile. I was hopeful but still in the back of my mind I was worried, I guess most if not all parents would be. Any way she seemed to cope well and she definitely had more sleep that night than I did, I have no idea how anyone sleeps in a hospital.

Fortunately the next morning the Dr took one look at her overnight obs and said she could go straight home when she was ready. Awesome news and a great start to her recovery. She is doing so well that apart from a bit extra tiredness you would never know she had had an operation a few days ago.

So with her recovery looking alright and me sitting in a semi-dark hospital room watching tv on my computer something came and reminded me how fortunate I was and how thankful I was to God for how Miss 3 came through her op. A little girl was bought into the ward. She was tiny and her mother almost hysterical. Probably past it only due to exhaustion. She didn't even look 2 and had had to have her appendix out in an emergency op. The mother had previously been told not to worry because her daughter would be fine, it couldn't possibly be her appendix because she was too young. Of course that was a misdiagnosis and I'm sure if I had been in her shoes I probably would have been at least that stressed if not more so. In that moment I just had to pray in thankfulness that we had finally had our surgery, that it didn't get to the point of emergency and that even in those moments when delay and even the initial diagnosis had me wondering if God was even looking out for my girls, he obviously was. It also reminded me that there are people who always have it harder and they need our prayers even more than we need to pray for ourselves.

See God sees a picture I don't and sometimes it is very hard to remember that. When everything seems to be coming apart at the seams I try to hold on and pray and believe. Even then it feels pointless sometimes, that I'm barely holding on by my fingertips. Now though seeing things from the other side of the op, I feel more relaxed and thankful and somehow in amongst everything else I found my character and when I got on stage last night I nailed it. This reminds me that sometimes prayer feels a little ineffective, a bit like going through the motions but even in those times God knows our hearts and He hears, He just answers in His own way and on a very few occasions we are lucky enough to see the why later.