My Son and Wishing For a Different Reality

I went with my husband on a pioneer trek last week in the searing heat and blowing Wyoming wind, and we were a Ma and Pa to six teenagers we hadn't met a couple of months ago. It was the easiest parenting we had done in years.

Our troubled son has been causing a lot more trouble for himself in the sexual addiction arena. His addiction is no slow-moving canal: it is a rising, crashing river. It is affecting our entire family and many others, and I don't see any signs that he is ready to stop.

The remorse he showed a few years back has hardened into flippant indifference. I see occasional glimpses of his kind heart and fun personality, but only if I stick to a narrow range of topics: new songs, good bands and/or funny movies. I connect with him on those subjects and should I venture into life or feelings or pretty much anything else, he shuts down.

Right now my heart feels somewhat stony when it comes to him. He has told so many lies, broken so many rules and hidden so many things. I surrender his behavior over and over again on sticky notes and stuff them in my surrender bag. I pray that God will intervene in his life. I pray that I can love him no matter what. I pray that I can like him. I pray that my other kids will be protected from the darkness around him.

In our trek family we had a fourteen year old boy named Tyler, who lives with his dad and two younger siblings. I learned that his parents (who were 17 and 19 when they married) divorced four years ago, and that his dad had remarried and recently divorced his stepmom. His dad takes the kids to church and works nights to support them. One recent Sunday Tyler was at his mom's house and he wanted to go to church so badly that he had his grandma look up the ward boundaries and find the nearest church. Then he rode his bike there and walked in all by himself. He also told me that he had made a promise to himself when he was 8 or 9 that he would go on a mission and graduate from college and that nothing would stop him.

I am impressed by this kid. This quiet, brown-eyed boy has many cards stacked against him, but he has so much spiritual strength. I slam down the question that rises up in me, "Why can't I have a son like this?"

I know. It does no good to ask that. My job is to accept the son I have and to love him unconditionally, and I am struggling with both. I read Melodie Beattie's words over and over:

"It is time to let it go. It is time to let[him] go. That doesn't mean that we can't love that person anymore. It means that we will feel the immense relief that comes when we stop denying reality and begin accepting. We release that person to be who [he] actually is. We stop trying to make that person  someone [he] is not....We stop letting what we are not getting from that person control us. We take responsibility for our life. We go ahead with the process of loving and taking care of ourselves. We decide how we want to interact with that person, taking reality and our own best interests into account. We get angry, we feel hurt, but we land in a place of forgiveness. We set [him] free, and we become set free from bondage. This is the heart of detaching in love."

Just when I think I have really detached, I realize that I am holding on so tightly to what I want for him that I am physically clenching my jaw. As if I could will him to be the son I want him to be. As if.

I see that I have much yet to learn about parenting and accepting and loving.