I was really nervous at first, and still am a little bit, but I find that the more thought I put into it, the more plans and preparations I make, the more I settle on what our priorities ought to be, the more I realize that I am able to teach my child, the more encouraged I feel.
The timing of all of this is so crucial as well, being as how just a few months ago I would not have been equipped to take this task on! I am so blessed to say that I have emerged from a truly difficult time as a woman who knows why she is living and how she is regarded by those who matter most. I'm tempted to relay a parable I recently heard, retold in my own words, that explains my feelings regarding this very dark time:
Once a young boy, under the gaze of his father ran full out to his neighborhood pond. As the boy grew closer to the water's edge the father started yelling, flailing his arms and screaming, "Stop son, stop!" The boy with the wind in his ears could not hear his father and plunged face first into the water with a splash. By then his father was running with all his might, and with frantic screams pleading with his son to get out of the water. The boy saw his father's panic and turned to realize that an alligator was not far off. He began to scramble back to the shore but as his hands touched land the powerful beast snapped down on his legs. The alligator would have dragged the boy under but just then, amidst the boy's deafening screams, his father lunged toward the shoreline and grabbed his son's arms. Defying the alligator's hold he summoned all his might, digging even his nails into his son's flesh refusing to let him go! A man not far off watching this gruesome scene took aim with a rifle and with shocking accuracy killed the animal on the spot! At once the boy was released and returned his father. He went through a time of healing and came to a full recovery, but the boy took a certain pleasure in the scars that remained. Not the scars left by the vicious alligator who sought to kill him, but the scars on his arms; the scars left by the one who would not let him go.
