You’ve seen the social media posts urging you to repost or share if your daughter is your best friend; your son is someone you respect and admire; you are a mother and you think about your children 24 X 7 whether you are with them or not.
It is a well known fact that parents make sacrifices for their children. Mothers would starve and give their last bit of food to feed their hungry child. Parents work two jobs to provide for their children, spend sleepless nights nursing them through illness. A mother or father may take a second mortgage or scale down domestic arrangements to put a child through college.
But there are other sacrifices beyond the material.
How about the father who learned to dance so he could dance at his daughter’s wedding – even though he is ensconced in a denomination that does not dance?
Or; the father who gave his daughter in marriage for the second time – even though he does not believe in divorce and remarriage and still cannot fathom what went wrong the first time.
Consider the mother who, filling the shoes of deceased father, walks hand in hand with her daughter down the garden path and gives her in marriage to – another woman.
Love, pure parental love. Unwavering. Unflinching. Happy are the families who can say, “I do not understand or agree with your lifestyle, but I love you, oh how I love you, anyway.” Is that not the love of God the father toward all his sons and daughters?
Are there limits to your parent love?
This too, is love.
Our daughter sucked the life out of us for two years, then we backed away because we were draining ourselves of the energy we needed for our 3 boys. I can only take her in small doses right now. She is shallow and WILL NOT hear anything we say. Her boyfriend hasn’t worked in well over a year. She works two jobs. He reeks of pot. So does she, but she swears she isn’t smoking it. If I could take her away somewhere, I would. Where? Bolivia, in the High Valleys, where she could not find her way home. I know this, because I’ve been there and it’s the perfect place to hide her.
Sigh.
I know.
Pray.
Rinse.
Repeat.