My Biggest Fear

As parents, we all have our fears. They are very different for each and every one of us. The degree of this feeling of fear varies greatly as well. Each one of these fears that we have are valid. They are our fears and very real to us. We should never let anyone tell us differently. What we do with those fears and how we react to them, is what helps to define us.

My Biggest Fear...

• is not being able to provide for my children;
• is not falling ill and becoming a hardship or burden for my family;
• is not dying.

My Biggest Fear....

is FAILING my children. 

Ever since my oldest was born I wondered how I would be a good mother. I wondered whether I'll have all the patience necessary to raise him. I found it and got over it quickly. I have never feared about the love that I have for him and never will. 

Then came my second son. My fear moved past having patience. I figured by that point I was either gonna have it, find it, pray for it and get it or not. My fear was replaced by how I could love a second, tiny human being as much as I love my first. Guess what? I was able to love him and his brother, equally yet differently. 

Oh, but wait, thought I was done at two? Noooo... along came the third. My baby.... the one who pulled me out of an environment that was surely gonna send me to becoming someone who I would not like. By this point, my fear was definitely no longer patience nor being able to love more than one child with such fierce intensity as my first. I'd had two boys, what's a third boy added to the mix? Come on, I had this. 

When the "baby" (I put baby in quotation marks cause, really, he's no longer a baby) came along, I decided to stay home. It was perfect or so I thought. This went well for the first 3 years or so. I was having the time of life. 

Then something changed, inside me. I don't know if it was a gradual change or a sudden change. I don't know what brought it on. I just don't know. All I can say is that my patience started running thin, my emotions were all over the place, my sense of direction (not geographical but life wise) was failing. I felt that I was on the verge of depression. I really was. If I'm being honest, I think I was. Maybe not full on depression but a mild form perhaps. I never went to the doctor. I didn't want to be medicated. 

Gradually, I started feeling better. I decided it was time to suck it up and "get it together" as I so often tell my boys. Through the creation of this blog and finding things that were of interest to me and that could help to define me as more than "just a mom" things started to, and are, looking better for me. 

*BUT and this is a big, fat, huge, ginormous BUT every now and then, I slip. I start loosing that patience. My emotions get the best of me and control me. Rarely do my precious boys witness this. I try so hard to hide it. I do! On the rare occasion that they have, this is when I feel like the biggest failure of all, like I am failing my children.. 

• I feel like what I do now will gravely impact my boys when they get older. 
• I feel like I am the worst mother out there. 
• I feel like I am not doing my job adequately to raise my boys to be well rounded men. 

Fortunately, these bouts are far and few in between. That side of me rarely appears. I have a purpose in my life. My purpose is for my children. My purpose is for my husband. My purpose is to be the best me that I can be for them.

I share this, not for sympathy nor for pity, I share this because, you know what, it sometimes needs to be said. All parents need to be able to share their fear with others without fear, there's that ugly word again, of being judged by their peers. It is okay to share these things knowing that in the end, all will be right and we will not have failed.