Embrace Changing Relationships

The new year always brings about fresh changes, ideas, and goals. At least it does for me.  Every year I set forth at least 50 goals.  No lie!  This year is no exception.  So I wrote them down and am in the process of creating an action plan for them which is always the exciting part for me.

But somewhere along the way during these holidays I started to reflect about the past few years and how scurried life has become in my home.  I have always felt really uncomfortable about the chaos especially since I don't think a lot of it is positive.  Much of it causes stress and weariness on me which I know reflects on my family which generally takes us to a place I don't care to be. 

I started thinking about how I can ease back on the stress and create more of a work life balance.  Reflecting on this then made me start thinking about new goals and new outlook.  I want our lives to be more easy going and memorable.  I want to do more with my family and spend more quality time with them.  I want to enjoy the laughs and the smiles and the little things like watching them play around the house or outside in the yard.

So in the spirit of making myself accountable for all of my new found goals and outlooks I thought I would share them here on my blog so I can hear any and all comments and gain new perspectives and look at my progress along the way.  One of my first and most important new year goals is:

Embrace Changing Relationships

I realized that I need to start creating new relationships with my older kids.  They are no longer little kids who need my constant direction and oversight.  They are young adult men who I gave wings to and now it's time to let them fly.

 One of them is in college and one is shortly there.  They no longer need me to tell them the difference between right and wrong.  I have been doing that for 18 years now and while I will always be there to step in and assist them, I have to trust that they learned something from my direction.  So this is a new experience for me going from being a mommy to being a friend.  I had a talk with my oldest the other day about this and how much I enjoy sitting and talking with him and how much fun he is to be around.  It's such a new dynamic for us...actually CHOOSING to be together rather than defaulting to be together.  It's one of the lessons of motherhood that no one ever told me about and something I never really thought of until he went away to college and suddenly I found myself wondering how to cope with him being an adult and away from me. 

So as I learn and grow through this transition I am pretty certain that we will stumble and fall every now and then and that's ok. I won't be too hard on any of us.  I will just take it as a new journey in life,enjoy all of life's moments,  and pray that God will be watching over us.