Flatlined

You know when you watch those hospital based T.V shows, and the heart monitor stops making groovy triangled lines and the intermittent beeping changes to a long annoying whine of a straight never ending “beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep” as the triangles stop and turn into a straight line?
And then the panic sets in?

Flatlined.
That. That is how I have been feeling about one of my children.


We are in the throughs of moving.
We are stuck in the start/stop, hurry up/and wait part of it all. And it sucks. A lot.

And I have been really angry and sad and mad, and heart broken with one of my children.
I have struggled letting a choice they have made go, and I deep down know it is affecting my day to day interaction with them. Maybe not on the surface, but deep down where the good stuff is? My heart is flat lining toward this kid. I don't want it to feel like that.
But I am human, and trust and things held most important can only be broken so many times before wear and tear of emotion is inevitable.

So it's four in the mourning and I just finished rocking and feeding baby Faith's little sister, and now can't get back to sleep.
As I lay, contemplating/praying meditating on things I have no time in the daylight to ponder. This one thing that is eating me up/flat-lining my heart comes up.

I am asking myself “HOW, how are you going to trust/feel better about this kid, that needs you, and obviously needs to get better and change their behavior, how is this going to work?”
and I dive into that big empty ache, that is filled with fear... and I swim around in it a little bit, telling myself I know the answer, but I stubbornly and understandably don't want to do it.

The answer is whispered to me, in the sleeping breath of my three year old laying next to me....

“ How can they get better if they can't forgive themselves. How can they forgive themselves and move on, if you won't.”

Well shit.

There it is.
And I don't know if I can.

But there lies the truth. Forgiving is never ever Forgetting....especially when safety is involved.
And yet there it lies in my palm like a sleeping bird.

They can't let go and move on, if I can't.
I know this because I only move forward in my life once I have forgiven myself for stupid choices and actions that have hurt myself and others, and I am an adult.

For a kid, they need a map in the grand forgiveness of themselves, shame is too much of a roadblock. I, I too have been guilty in using it towards them, I too have been blocking them from progress , because I want feel and know they are sorry enough. And that is my stuff, not theirs. Their shame is so deep, this kid is sorry for 90% of the breaths they take, and they might not even know that, but there it is eating them up all the same.

But what if, what if I can get over myself for one minute?

What if they can learn this one thing, to forgive themselves and move on, that, right there is a tool most adults never master....and what if we all could, what would the world look like?

So damn-it.
Looks like it's going to have to start with me.
And I am far far far away from wanting to. Really if I am being honest with how I feel.

I.don't.want. to. The flat lining feels numb and oddly easier than opening up the wound and scraping out the infection...but if I can do this for them and in turn they learn to do it for themselves and others?
Forgiveness of oneself , well that is the root of the root.
And where the beginning of self healing starts..........

Beep.beep.beep.beep.beep.beep.
<3