My New Motto: "Controlling What I Can Control"

I have taken on a new challenge lately -- myself. And I am the untamable shrew, the unstoppable force, the one with whom to be reckoned, the powerful one. So, attempting to take myself on is the ultimate challenge.

I realized today that I am feeling very empowered by my control over what goes into my mouth and the amount of exercise I get. My results were encouraging this morning.

I have determined to focus on controlling what I can control. Can I control what my children do? No! I can provide for them, love them, give them advice, attempt to keep them safe, but since we have a total of 9 teenagers right now, we realize that we cannot MAKE them make good choices. We provide guidance. And, a great line used by the social worker yesterday at Salinda’s meeting really made me chuckle. She told Salinda, “You’re parents can’t keep you from burning yourself if you want to bad enough. But don’t expect them to hand you the hot skillet from the stove and say, ”Here, put this on your face.“

And thus, we parent teenagers with rules -- to keep them safe and hopefully to help them make good choices. And sure, we can do our best to limit their exposure to the harms of the outside world, but eventually, they will get there.

And so I have realized more than ever before this week that I can only truly control one thing. I can control my response to things. And so I have started to play games with myself and my kids -- ways that I can control my response to them that will involve me feeling victorious at the end.

I need to leave for a doctor’s appointment... but I will share more about this later.