My Heart Hurts

Yesterday's pain keeps adding on to today's, and the cumulative nature of it is weighing me down.

Today, it is gray and snowy outside.  Not big fluffy flakes, but the little ones that don't add up to pretty whiteness, but will be gone in the morning.  The gray feels appropriate, matching my mood.  The tears keep falling periodically throughout the day, in tune with the sporadic nature of the snowfall.  Somehow my dog knows, and insists on lying with my or sitting in the chair right beside me.

I have barely accomplished anything today.  Everything feels too heavy.  Even eating seems to take too much effort.  So, I am hungry, and tired, and grumpy, and hurt, which never ends well.

This part of January is always hard.  Vacations are ending.  Life comes back to bite us in the butt.  Bills still have to be paid.  I still don't have a job.  My two oldest children insist on growing up and leaving, and barely speak to me.  All that we have to look forward to is 8 more weeks of nasty winter weather.

Frankly, I feel deceived.  Let down.  Mislead, at the very least.

Those cute little kids...the sweet-smelling little bundles we brought home from the hospital....they were supposed to grow up to be loving older children who brought home spouses that we loved, and raise children that we can't get enough of.  They weren't supposed to cause heartache and pain and fear for us, their parents.  That is not how any of this was supposed to work.

And yet...they are individuals.  They have their own hurts that they have to work through in their own time, and their own ways.  They have to learn their own lessons.  I can't force them to learn.  I can't send them to their rooms any more.  They have to do this themselves, and I am just along for the ride.
So, I do what I can...I wash their laundry, and I fix the meals, and I drive them places, and I pray.  Oh, boy do I ever pray.  All the time.  God, PLEASE give me wisdom.  God, PLEASE help them make wise choices.  God, PLEASE let them choose You.  God, above all else, PLEASE make it count.  Make the teaching, and the loving, and the laundry, and the discipline, and the poopy diapers, and the long nights.....please make them all count.  Because I love these kids that I am finding I don't really like that much, and I want Your will for them to be worked out...but know that my heart hurts, and I don't know how much more of this I can handle.