Choices

We are meant to make choices in life.  Some are easier than others.  Some are made quickly without much thought and others take deep reflection first.  I have made so many choices in my life that matter with such clarity such as adopting my boys.  I knew without a doubt it was what I was meant to do.  I knew they were the boys chosen for me.  Even at the beginning stages when I was picking an agency I knew I had picked wisely.  I would be proven right once we were in Russia and talked with other adoptive parents.

Mother's worry leads us to doubt many of our decisions while we raise our kids.  But I know my mothering decisions are always made in love and when made in love those that love you will forgive.  My friend Robin gave me a prayer card that I use often in Mothering.  It says, "Most loving Father, the example of parenthood, teach us what to give and what to withhold.  Show us when to reprove and when to praise.  Make us gentle and considerate yet firm and watchful.  Keep us from weak indulgence or from great severity.  Give us the courage to be disliked sometimes by our children, when we must do necessary things which are displeasing in their eyes.  Give us the imagination to enter their world in order to understand and guide them.  Give us all the virtues we need to lead them by word and example..."  I say this prayer often especially when I am making a choice that has to do with Max or Nikolai. I say it most often when I making those significant choices such as switching their school a few years back.

My pastor preached a sermon last Sunday after I had already composed this post.  He explained that with every choice your are saying yes to something but it also means you are saying no to something else.  That statement rang true with me, even if it made me doubt.  When we are making choices about who to spend our time with we are saying yes to one and no to the other.  Our choices show what we value most.  On Mother's Day Max said, "I am choosing not to go to the rodeo because I know you want me to spend time with you.  It is not because I don't want to go."  At first I was offended by his statement but later realized he choose to do what was valuable to me.  He didn't make it easy to be with him but he did make the right choice.

Sometimes are choices are marred by deception.  We deceive ourselves about our responsibility in our decision making process.  We often blame others or blame the modern, technology-ridden world.  But in the end it is our compass that guides our decisions and we are the ones who have to live with those that we make.

Perhaps what is most important about choices is to not be tormented by the ones you didn't choose and sometimes that is the most difficult lesson of all. So, here's to wishing for Solomon's wisdom, no wonder he asked for it and he didn't have technology to deal with.