Pulling Away

I won’t make any bones about it.  Hannah is a difficult child.  Beautiful.  So smart.  Hilarious. Precocious.  She gets away with many things she shouldn’t because I’m too busy stifling my laughter behind my hands over my face.  But difficult, headstrong.  She is able to push my buttons and bring out the worst in me in a heartbeat.  I lose parent points the moment she gets up each morning just because she’s awake.  For those of you with a child like this (and it seems like everybody has one) you know exactly what I mean.

But the thing that’s been killing me lately is her pulling away.

 

Hannah gets mad and upset, and she shuts down.  But I love her, even when I’m angry at her, and so my anger usually dissipates and I want to console her.  I go to her and touch her and she pulls away.  I persist, and she yells at me to stop touching her.  I try to ask her questions to draw her out and she averts her face and refuses to talk to me.  I am hurt.  I get angry.  I feel that I am the worst mom ever.  I despair for the years ahead of angry silence, when she is the only child left in the house.

Yes, I am being a bit dramatic.  She is only 3, and isn’t that behavior by default the very definition of a 3-year old?  Especially one that is trying to forge her own path.

But here’s the real deal.  Yesterday I finally got to the place where I was able to apply this to myself.  For little Hannah is not an island.  Her testy traits, her rebellious tendencies, her overwhelmingly strong feelings, her need to establish who she is and struggling as she goes…these things all come from somewhere.  And if I’m honest, I can admit they come a lot from me.

For I, too, struggle.  And shut down.  And pull away.  And can be incredibly difficult to deal with on a personal level.  Just ask a good friend who tried last year to find a way in to help me.  And gave up.

I’ve been pulling away ever since Africa.  Don’t ask me why that was the catalyst, except that it was an amazing time, when I felt God breathing on me in the most real way I have ever felt.  And now I can't anymore.  I came home and turned my life upside down after Africa (in a good way).  But inwardly ever since then, I’ve been fighting a serious battle, and in the process, I’ve been steadily pulling away from everything good.

i’m trying to figure out who I am.  i’m trying to figure out my purpose, the meaning for my life.  i’m trying to figure out who I am in God and how He loves me when i don’t love myself.  i want to live a life to the full.  not full of junk and noise but full of the best there is for me.  but what does that mean and how do i do it because how i’m existing now sure isn’t it…

I have a choice.  There is always a choice.  I can pull away to the point where I can’t stop anymore and don’t want to.  I’m close to there.  Or I can crawl to God and let him pull me to Him.  Let Him pull me away into what is good, what is honorable, what is right.

I want to be pulled away.  Pull me away, God.  Let me find the courage to let go.