Letting Go

I was under the assumption that when I made bold Godly moves in my life that it would be extremely easy and I would have this overwhelming peace and comfort in my heart.  I don't know where I picked up that assumption as it has never proven true, but I experienced nothing of the sort when making a "parental" decision this last week.
Yes, sometimes as parents we have to do what's right for our family and be real live grown-ups.  So, I thought that that meant it was hard on the kids, not hard on us....  After all this trauma with me being sick so much lately and us having NO margin for error in our schedule we realized something.  We where drifting apart as a family.  Every moment was, "where are you going? who are you taking? are you picking up...?", or "no we can't come we have (fill in the blank)".  We would have a saturday to do "nothing" and I kid you not it was the worst day ever.  You would think we would be relieved to have a day off but instead we were seemingly bored.  We were tense and anxiety filled, trying to absorb all the "rest" we could but never feeling it.  We didn't feel any peace what-so-ever knowing that this was possibly the only calm that we had scheduled for quite some time.  So I turned to my husband and said, "why don't we know how to hang out with each other?",  and he replied "I don't know but we need to change it"  You see we are sinking further and further into to this world and driving further away from the blessings of what God promises a family to be.  "Gifts" are supposed to be how we see our children, not burdens.  "Lovers and friends" are supposed to be our spouses, not ankle weights or annoyances.
Our daughter is getting older and older, sassier and sassier.  She is filling all her "off" time as far away from home as possible, I don't think knowingly so but this is where she is seeking her joy.  She is 6.  When I was 6 I played house with my sister, played with my barbies in my basement playhouse or maybe had a neighbor over.  The thought of a sleepover, weekend sporting event, or not stepping in my own house until 7pm was non existent.
So out of the blue, literally I can not even remember how this came up, we started to talk about how our year looked for her being involved in an extra curicular events.  Meaning practices and competitions.  Either all of us would be busy or just Mya and I away from home.  We have 2 hours of practice each week and 20 min of practice each day after school or after I get off work to help her get set up to practice, sometimes this is at 7pm.  This is us saying no to family get togethers  or spontaneous events.  This means me, the mom, being very overwhelmed by one more job in this house.  As I said before we have no room for error.  This means, Josh works.  We don't know what hours we don't know how many hours we don't know where he'll be, but for right now in this season, its often and exhausting.  I get sick, often.  For right now we are trying to find out why we are trying to find out how to fix it but in the end, it happens and when it does there is no one to pick up my slack.
So the thought of removing something out of our daughters life that she (and I) love literally made me (and still does somewhat) nauseous.  We talked and fought and talked some more.  I get it.  I get we HAVE to remove it.  That doesn't change that Josh and I both tossed and turned and couldn't sleep that night knowing we had to tell her in the morning.
And as we sat at the breakfast table and our daughter silently sat, tears running down her face, I knew that being a grown up sucked.  Making rational, parental, yet Godly decisions is not easy, comfortable or peaceful.  She wouldn't say anything.  We encouraged her to talk, she wouldn't.  Then after josh left I had her sit on my lap and we both cried (me internally) and then we talked about how that night since she didn't have practice we could pick a recipe from her cook book and make something.  She smiled.  I knew then that even though our hearts ached that this would be a blessed decision.  I want you to know though I kept holding on, I kept trying to make excuses, trying to fix it so she could still be part of her team.  I had this overwhelming thought in mind that it was my fault and I was letting everyone down.  The teacher, the other parents, my daughter.  Just in general, why couldn't I manage this ONE thing!!!  When I talked to josh it was like trying to convince him I could handle it.  And then he hit home.  "Laura, we can keep her on team.  It's up to you.  I want you to know though that YOU are putting this on yourself.  I can not help you right now with this and this is more stress you are putting on yourself.  If you get sick, you can not get angry that our family falls apart because we have too much going on.  We can make it work financially we can probably make it work time wise, but we will be stretched to the max."  UGH, yes I get it "God speaking through my husband".  Does God ever say to you, "child, I am trying to remove something from you, even though it hurts, it will be better once it is gone and the wound is healed, let Me help you."  and we just hold on.  We think we can do it, we think we are superhuman.  Know I know this may sound like rubbish to some, like "what's the big deal she's 6 she'll move on."  But I think you can see that we all have things in our lives more difficult due to other circumstances.
  Watching my daughter dance is the most beautiful thing to me, or so I thought.  Last night she was practicing her bible verse for church and after she read it we prayed it back to God as her prayer.  Her face lit up and she was said, "this is so cool mom! I'm going to keep reading it after you leave!" and "mom I had the best time practicing for the Christmas concert today! I think I want to try a solo this year!" Which by this way she couldn't have done before because we would have missed to many practices. I don't even know why for some reason that verse and prayer hit her heart but it connected her in her own way to God instead of through me.  I left her room knowing that this decision, this trial( not just removing her from dance) we are getting through is making us all stronger.  I need to put in perspective the things in life not just for her sake but mine.  There will be many many more events for our children.  I will be proud of them more times than I can even imagine.  I can't ruin God's plan for them but I can make it quieter for them to hear.  Maybe through my sickness and all this cRaZy right now He is doing a work in her.  Who am I to get in the way of that.  wow, way to make something about me that's not about me :)
It's amazing to me how as parents we take things on put our kids through things that we are trying to heal or battle through ourselves.  We discipline them for attitudes that we see in ourselves.  We watch them achieve and live vicariously through them.  I really want this year of painful growth to mean something for our family.  I really want to pay attention to what God is saying....  ok PS I JUST got a call from the nurse that the doctor is going to call me later today with results from all my test last week.  sigh** ok here we go......I should also mention that the forementioned teacher and parents where extremely supportive and encouraged us to put family first.  Proof that satan's attack on my ego and pride was outed by God's love and grace being poured on to this family.
thanks for making it through this huge blog today, Laura