Navigating Deep Waters

For the weary mother navigating teenagers and healing

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
— Galatians 6:2

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving.”
— St. Francis de Sales

There’s a moment in Pirates of the Caribbean where Jack Sparrow steps clean off the top of a sinking mast and onto the dock.... as the whole ship disappears beneath him.

That’s felt alarmingly like my life lately.

It's August when I write this and it was in February when a fire in the garage displaced my family of 7 and 5 dogs.

My oldest is 18, my youngest is 10.

My dogs are 80% blue heelers.

We’ve been living in hotels and Airbnbs since February, navigating smoke-damaged memories of a life that will never return, and a marriage mercilessly and irrevocably unraveling in slow motion. My son, has been in a dark season since the fire and is finally now stabilizing - he's 15.... and then came the news from my daughter yesterday.; She is struggling with an eating disorder and is hooked on vapes. She's 16. I’m… tired.

I only picked back up the pieces of my walk with Christ later on in my 30s. Now the echoes of what I navigated poorly when we were all younger are coming back to be reckoned with. I was feeling pretty small.

But yesterday, while driving, I had this thought:
There’s not just one good outcome for our kids.
There are many, and maybe our real work for SOME parents (myself included) is to keep walking with them through the hard parts, especially the ones that mirror our own. In doing that, we get to allow God to parent and heal the younger versions of ourselves, too.

To help my daughter heal her relationship to food, I’ll need to keep healing mine.
To help them out of nicotine, I need to fully heal from my own addictive parts.
I can’t lead them through something I haven’t faced myself.

But we talk, the kids and I, and that’s no small thing.
They tell me the hard stuff. I don’t always know what to do with it, but the fact that it’s said out loud? That matters. That keeps the ship afloat.

If you're navigating the deep waters too, if your kids are reflecting pieces of you that you’re only now learning how to hold, there’s space here. You’re not too late. You’re not alone. Favor can still find your family, even here, even now. I believe it for you just like I claim it for me.

Claim it for yourself too.

Reflection:
What patterns in your children might be asking for your healing too?
Where are you being invited to lead by walking first?

Prayer Today:
Lord, steady me. Let my healing ripple forward, not just through my life, but through theirs. Help me to listen, to love, and to step from sinking places onto firm ground.

~ Amen