I had lunch with a friend early this week. She and I had something in common. We both lost husbands when we were fairly young and within a few years of each other. Our children were small and needed lots of care. They are in their early 20s now and they grew up to be good kids, though there was varying degrees of challenges throughout their early years.<\/p>\n
We quickly established that, because we were single parents, it was tougher raising our children.<\/p>\n
After we talked about it for a few more minutes, we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sure that was the case. After all, raising children is a challenge, be it a pleasant one or not, whether there are two of you raising them or one. No one gave us a parenting manual and we certainly did things by trail and error on more than one occasion. We agreed that some of our practices were taken from our parents raising us. Sometimes that was good, sometimes bad.<\/p>\n
Occasionally we did not do certain things because we remember it was not the way we thought parents ought to be. I smiled when I said that quickly. So will my Mom when she reads this.<\/p>\n
As we think about parents and their relationships with us, we have to remember one very important point. Most often, our parents are doing the very best they can at that moment. They bring to parenting a set of skills from their own parents or have situations within their lives that cause them to make both good and bad decisions when it comes to parenting. Bottom line is, sometimes parents are effective and sometimes they are not.<\/p>\n
As our children become young adults, they will either be forgiving of our mistakes and shortcomings or will harbor them in their souls. With this in mind, teaching forgiveness is one of the most important things you can teach your child. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a powerful and essential tool for everyday living.<\/p>\n
Yesterday evening as my son visited for dinner, I asked him to forgive me for any of my shortcomings as a parent. He looked at me puzzled and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have anything I can remember you need to be forgiven for.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We smiled as he hugged me and I realized that we had taken care of any business like that we needed to long ago. Sort or reminds me of God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s forgiveness when we ask him to forgive us. He forgets and moves on. What a role model!<\/p>\n
My wish for you today: That each of you will find that place of forgiveness in your heart for anything your parent or parents may have done with you as they raised you. Harboring the past in your soul can destroy you and make you less effective as a parent and a member of society. Life is just too short for that.<\/p>\n
My wish for you today<\/strong>: That if you find yourself in this place, let it go. Turn the page. Say out loud \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I forgive you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Whether you say it in front of your parent or not is up to you. Your circumstances may not allow for that. But, saying it today \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and believing it – will help you move on with your life and be a happier, healthier you.<\/p>\n ~Joellen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had lunch with a friend early this week. She and I had something in common. We both lost husbands when we were fairly young and within a few years of each other. Our children were small and needed lots of care. They are in their early 20s now and they grew up to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflicts","category-parenting-families","category-teenagers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}