A MOTHER'S DESIRE TO TURN BACK TIME - 12/12/2023

If I had it to do all over again, what would that look like for me. But more importantly for my baby girl, who has now formed into a grown woman with an estranged relationship with me her mother. She is not to blame, she is merely a causality in the midst of two young teenagers coming together in their own brokenness. The results, a beautiful daughter that deserved so much more than a father leaving her to be raised without his presence in her life and a mother that gave all of what she felt she had to give yet left out the most critical piece of an emotional attachment that her daughter needed so badly, yet I did not have the capacity to give due to my own brokeness.

Turning back time with the life that I had, while raising my daughter. Although pregnant at 17 and giving birth at 18 was not ideal at all! It was my reality. I found myself in love with this beautiful baby girl that had made an entrance into this world with boldness at just 1 minute old. It took me around day 2 before I warmed up to the beauty of her but once I did, there was no turning back, she had me. I knew that no matter what happened I would raise her to the best of my ability and I vowed to her the day I brought her home from the hospital at just 5 days old "while raising you, I will live my life around you and your needs". I can say with full confidence, I did that. Oh but what a tangled web we weave when we vow in our brokenness.

My Mother has this saying that she says "you're so deep in sin, you don't know you are in sin". When I first heard her say this (not to me thank God) for whatever reason I had a visual of a mason jar with a spider on the inside. Because the spider can see us, it believes it's venom can reach us by way of it's bite. However, the glass between the spider and the outside world keeps us safe from his venom even though the spider doesn't know that. The same applies to my vow. This vow that I made to my daughter though such an awesome commitment that I kept, became my mason jar. I was in it giving all I had to her and it looked like when looking out that my "all I had" was enough for her, not realizing she was missing something so important and crucial to her development. She needed that emotional side of me. What I was doing was suppressing her character for the one I felt was to be her reality. The vow "while raising you, I will live my life around you and your needs" became protect her from the world that hurt me, don't allow her to be harmed by the things that harmed me, tell her the way vs showing her the way with the consequences that may come if the wrong decision is made (there is a difference here). If I could turn back time oh the things I would do differently.

Elenor