It's ok to be uncomfortable . . .

Sending 2 kids to college in 2 years will have you thinking about life, parenting and everything that goes along with that. You know . . .small topics! Ha! One of the many gifts I have been given in the past year is the gift of a boss that encouraged failure. Of course the goal was not to fail over and over again but rather have the freedom to try new things, learn and grow! This was such an incredible blessing and a very rare one in the work world. I had spent so many years feeling like I was expected to be perfect in everything (this is a very slippery slope as we all know!). This belief ends in constant failure since we are simply not perfect!

As a mom it is so easy to find a good chunk of our identity in our kids successes and failures. I am as guilty as the next mom. I was successful as a mom when my kiddo did X, Y, and Z. Yay me! In the process of "letting go" these past 2 years, I have thought about this a lot. 

During my time of rest I have listened to some sermons (Francis Chan is simply awesome) and was struck/convicted but a particular sermon. He spoke about how often we pray for life to be easy, for everyone to stay safe, and for no challenges. When you stop and really look at life, how often have you learned a new skill, grow in an area, changed for the better while life is easy, safe and without challenge? I mean seriously . . .when?

As parents we SOOOOO badly want our kids to be safe, healthy, have it easy, etc. We pray for our boys to be safe at college and our daughter to be safe at school. We also like to step in and "help" make things easier when the going gets tough. 

Adults have created a world of entitled young people. A world full of participation trophies and truly spoiled brats. Don't get me wrong, there are MANY amazing young people as well. I constantly hear people baffled that there is such an entitled generation. Really when you stop and think about it, why are we so baffled. We have created a world where we do not want our precious babies to struggle or be sad so we do everything we can to protect them. As a result, we have a generation that simply does not know how to cope with challenges and it is our fault!

What message are we sending when we swoop in and "fix" everything? I can only imagine how lousy those kids feel whose parents have paid off colleges for them to be admitted (if they do not feel lousy then we have even bigger issues!). I am pretty sure that the message sent was "I don't believe you can do it so I am going to do it for you". I certainly do not ever want my kids to feel like that is the message I am sending them (though I know I have been guilty of this). 

I have been working to change the way I talk with my kids. It was finals week last week for my boys and my middle guy finished his freshman year. This is such a huge year for so many things. So much change and transition and "adulting". He also took a really tough spring term. I could have given him all the advice but I did 2 things instead . . . first, I stopped projecting my own experiences and issues on him and second, I let him do it his way. You know what, some of it worked great and some of it did not goes as well. When we would talk about a test that did not go as well as hoped, instead of being worried and feeling upset, I looked at the learning opportunity for us both. We talked about what he learned from the experience, how he will want to approach tough classes next year, etc. I gave him permission to cut himself some slack and to understand that he is not perfect! AND I continued to tell him what an incredible human he is. His worth is not in physics. He is an amazing human who I am so blessed to be the mom of. 

For me, I have had to give up the false sense of control. Y'all we might think we are controlling things but we just are not. I believe that by letting my kids grow through challenges, they will learn so much (this is so hard). My prayer has changed. I definitely pray for my kids to be safe and I pray that they will have challenges that they can handle. I pray that they grow to be adults who can weather the storms of life because there are always storms.

It is my hope that parents start t be ok with their kids being uncomfortable. It's time to walk through life with them instead of carrying them. I challenge each of us to focus on sending messages that show we believe in them and it is ok for them to not be perfect. More importantly, as parents we need to be ok with being uncomfortable and model that for our kids.