I really should blog.... but

I'm not feeling anything happy or hopeful to post and I don't like to post when I am whiny. But apparently that is how I have been a lot lately.

Just got done at the Y and am now at Dunn Brother's. My biggest challenge, to clump it all together, is that I care more about my kids lives than they do and I overcompensate for them for the sake of peace or for the sake of attempting to get them on the wrong track. Now grant it, if most people looked in on our lives they would not see me as an enabler, I'm far from it. But internally I carry too much of their stress -- stress that they aren't even carrying.

John wouldn't get up this morning after being gone all weekend. He appeared sometime last night after having promised he would be home on Saturday night so he could go to church and WIlson's Christmas program Sunday morning. He never showed and then last night he didn't even let me know he was home. His first words to me were, "Why didn't you let me know about Salinda?" I explained that he wasn't home to let know, i didn't even know where he was, and that I am not going to track him down when he isn't even speaking to me and I don't know where he.

So I looked up his attendance online and it appears he is skipping some classes even when I do go through all the stress of trying to get him out of bed and get him there he wasn't even going to class once we dropped him off. So I need to let go of that. While I had his attendance open I meandered over to the other kids grades and almost all of them are slipping. I'm wondering if I liked it better before thre was a way to check grades on the internet. At least then what I didn't know wasn't hurting me.

I grew up believing that you had to try hard to fail a class. I couldn't imagine how anyone could fail. Apparently it's pretty easy. I keep telilng myself that it is their lives and their grades and their consequences, but you know, it's not jsut theirs. It's mine too. I told myself that the whole time Rand was in his first year of college and now here he is, two years later, still living at home with no job. So the consequences don't just belong to them.

Just like evryone else we are experiencing financial struggles. And we keep collecting more young adults who are unwilling to do their part. It's one thing to take free room and board when you are emotionally present and contributing to the family, but if you are going to slip in and out of the family system, always taking and never giving, it's a bit much.

I am going to have to once again follow my own advice and reframe, rethink, and rearrange my expectations so that I can live with what is. I am going to have to be thankful that my kids are home, the ones who are, instead of in jail or homeless. I am going to be thankful that they are healthy adn that they are not a danger to themselves or others. I am going to realize that I am not alone and that many others are going through the same things. I am going to have to find out ways to connect with my kids that are helpful and not harmful. Wish me luck.