Motherhood, there isn't a manual, we come into it at our own pace, a lifetime of learning.

I often find the interest that our society gives to training and teaching you how to be pregnant funny; and some how incomplete like a book that the author only wrote the first chapter too, where is the rest of the manual.  You get a Doctor that dotes on your needs, you go to the hospital where they jump at your every need, they take you to the door hand you your baby in the wheelchair they made you ride in, they assist you into your car and help you put your baby into the car seat, that is required by law, for the baby to ride in, your every move orchestrated for nine months.  You drive out of the parking lot and for many a new parent you have no idea what comes next.   They didn't give you a instructions in the box of goodies that came home with you.  You are scared and have no idea what you are going to do with that little bundle of joy.  I know some of you have it all planned out and have a how to book and a theory of what you will do to make the perfect child.  You got this.  Well for the rest of us, and you too eventually, raising a child is like riding a roller coaster.  I think that that may have been God's intent.  I think that raising a child is supposed to be a growing experience as much for the parents as it is for the child.  I think that we get to make mistakes every day raising our child just like we get to make mistakes with our own lives.  If God didn't want people to be raised with a human loving imperfect touch he would have had us be born adults.  I think that childhood is a flawed lovely time of bonding and experiment.  I think that the hard times in our lives mold our children in different ways than we were molded in our childhoods.  We are never going to raise our children the way our parents raised us, some may try, but life is so different each day that it is not possible to accomplish.  I know that rarely does anyone want to raise  their children in the exact same way they were raised, there are always changes we want to make.  We get to critic our parents parenting and we inevitably want to fine tune it.  I have a friend who thinks she raises her kids the exact same way her momma raised her, then I hear her saying in a more candid moments " I want this for my kids a little different than when I was a kid" she makes changes too, if only she were strong enough and honest enough with herself to stand up and take credit for her changes in parenting.  I think just when we seem to get it right our kids are all grown up.  Maybe that is the secret, that pride in our success that isn't really ours but the success of the child we raised.

I like being a grandparent.  I get to see my kids going through the process.  They are just as scared as I was, they are just as clumsy and just as frustrated, I must have done something right after all.  I also have the unique experience of getting to do it all over again with them.  I am more at peace this time around, but just as scared and just as frustrated, but know that in the end my kids will get raised and succeed and want to change all the mistakes I made raising them.  How wonderful the cycle of life is.  It is like a hoop that rolls down a hill, over and over again, each time there are different bumps to navigate but in the end it gets to the bottom of the hill so God can take it to the top and let it roll down anew with each new birth, Always the same and never alike.... tomorrow.