Surrender

I've been thinking a lot about surrender lately. It just seems to be lurking aroung every corner and why it is so LARGE in my mind.

I was talking to a friend last night and she is fighting a battle with her son. It is a life or death battle, and unfortunately, meth is in her son's corner, holding on tight. I told her that I had zero advice for her all I could do was offer a shoulder, let her know I knew what she was going through, and tell her most importantly, I loved her.

What needed to be said was this. "You can fight, scream, yell, beg, plead, bargain, and threaten, and none of that shit matters a damn bit. You can tell them, you know more, you can show just cause for this belief, and you can even share the fact that NOTHING in this world has EVER caused you more pain than their burdens and heartache. You can beg them to believe that you would go to the ends of the Earth for them, beg, borrow, steel for them. But NONE of it matters. NOT ONE BIT. The hardest thing as a parent you will ever have to do is surrender. Surrender the fight, the pull and push of their demons. Because, when you get down to the nitty gritty of it, it is not our fight to fight. And if it is something they are not willing to do, everything you have done, the tears, the screaming, begging, slamming doors, picking them up, letting them fall, is all for nothing. You have to surrender."

I know most parents say, "Oh no, that's my child, I can't give up on them!" Who the hell asked you to give up on them. What I am saying is that you have to let them figure it out. If the go to prison, rehab, live or die, it has to be their choice. You cannot, nor ever will be able to stop another human being from doing what it is they truly want to do. The only thing you are doing, while being a co-dependent, is causing more hurt, and enabling them further. You may not think so. But as long as you are busy trying to MAKE THEM do the right thing, they still have someone to blame, and I promise, it is not them.Parents, I assume, are all a bit co-dependent, so it comes as no surprise, that we fight so hard for our children. But 99.9% of the time, it is all in vain.

I have 3 children, none of which are perfect, but 2 did an amazingly good job at screwing up their lives. I fought, I screamed, I cried, I cried a lot, and not one bit of it mattered. The youngest, I surrendered, and much to my amazement, he is alive. The oldest, well lets just say, nobody really knows, only God. My middle child, he is doing good stuff and I am happy with the choices he's made. But more importantly, he is happy and thriving.

I am just relaying what I know. relaying what I've been through, and what I know worked. Doesn't mean that surrendering wasn't the most horrible pain I have ever felt but it also allows you to heal. And honestly, some days, I still get it all wrong. But at least my brain is pointed in the right direction, and some nights, I actually sleep. Life has finally started to open up again. I can do things without feeling guilty. I am doing things for me and the family (one of my children left behind) again. We talk, have fun, but most of all, WE  live.

Life isn't easy, and with all the evils in the world now, it just makes it harder for our kids to be strong. But fighting their battles will NEVER make them strong. Surrendering your right to fight their fights, knowing that it just might all crumble down around their ears is hard, but I don't think there is any other way. We can still be there for them, but we have to be able to remove ourselves and let them live.