Redemption
An act of redeeming or atoning for a fault or mistake and returning to a state of being redeemed.
Here is what happened for me. I married my husband when I was 26. I was a very young 26. I needed a mother and a father as much as I wanted a husband. He was going to make up for all my losses — a happy ending to a sad life.
It wasn’t so easy. He had two young boys in our care. They were 5 and 7 and had lots of NEEDS. I did not understand what it meant to be a wife, let alone a mother. I did my best at each of those tasks and I wasn’t very good at them. Most of the time I was resentful of everyone else’s needs and competed with them for my husbands attention. And I was so afraid to love. What if they did not love me back? I had no understanding of, or way to hold this negativity inside. The little boys were cute, creative and so smart. How could I feel so mean? I hated myself — guilt, fear and resentment forming a toxic mix.
This went on for years. My husband and I fought over our priorities, over the boys. Fights are especially vicious when you hate yourself. Maybe you know what I mean. Although I have a lot of happy memories of this time in my life — ice skating with the little boys for hours on the river behind our house, cutting down our own Christmas trees, harvesting a wheelbarrow of corn in the summer. But this was all with a backdrop of bad feelings.
Life goes on. The boys grew up and married and had boys of their own. My husband and I grew up too. We had a decade of empty nest time when we could concentrate on each other and our relationship. When our first grandson was born I was invited to be right there in the room for the birth. I was so proud of my stepson, sensitive and attentive to his wife and moved to tears by the miracle of birth. And our grandson! He was the center of our universe. We had no idea how much we would enjoy this second chance at parenting and how much better we would be as a team. Four grandsons later, our youngest now are three and five and have just begun sleep over dates. And we love every minute of it. It is pure joy being with these little guys who feel like my two best friends. Until one has a potty accident and I remember he is 3! The other night the simple joy ran so deep that I found my lips forming the word redemption. I knew I needed to write about it.
