Children

~ Children ~

Dear Friends on our Journey ~ ~ ~

My name is Mari and I have a disease that we sometimes just call Compulsive Overeating. I am grateful that I have found OA and a recovery program that works.

"You may strive to be
like (your children) ~
but seek not to make
them like you."

Kahlil Gibran

When I was a young mother with four children, I am guilty of having their days planned from morning until night with every activity under the sun. They awakened to the sounds of their mother saying "Wake Up, Wake Up ... Let's get going ... brush your teeth ... don't forget your books .... Hurry." And down the hill they would run to catch the school bus as I waved goodbye and reminded them of countless things to "not forget."

After school it was ball practice, ballet, piano lessons, boys choir, guitar lessons, supper, church functions,etc., etc. Home again and to their desks to study and then to the piano to practice. Hurry, Hurry .. Brush your teeth, say your prayers ... get back in that bed this very minute, you guys! ..... Lights Out. I love you. Goodnight."

At some point, Kahlil Gibran's message penetrated and I stopped dead in my tracks and completely changed. I wondered when my children would find the time to lie on the grass and find figures in the clouds, take a leaf from a tree and look at its veins, smell the roses, day dream swinging high in their swing and doing simply nothing? It wasn't easy to create order out of bedlam .... but we did it. And I am grateful that we did it. Because my children can now look back on a childhood. A real childhood.

My grandchildren? Nope. Not yet. Not until their parents one day stop in their tracks as I did and quit saying "Hurry! Hurry!" and stop some of those never ending lessons and practices. I have learned that children need to be themselves ... and this is as necessary for them as it is for me.

Dear God,
Please help me
not to hurry through
life ... and, by example teach
my children and grandchildren
to stop every once in a while and
smell the roses.

Love,
Mari
Marisok@aol.com
The Recovery Group