Seeds of Truth

This morning, Tuesday is always my very early morning as Terry has to be to work early to help the school with morning traffic, my mind was on Aaron as I finished up a memorial doll of his brother Michael who died at just a few months old. Aaron had a broken life and hung in precarious unbalance when Terry's mum passed away in 2004. Aaron had been in her care from the age of eighteen months when his own mother could no longer cope with him, I imagine due to a number of reasons. Terry's mum and step dad were raising this very young child, in ill health themselves, raising a child with a plethora of developing problems. Needless to say, at the age of 10 1/2 when he arrived to our family he was a mess. I look at this massive difference in habits, attitudes and behaviors, between Aaron then and my own son Ethan at 9 1/2 and the difference is unsettling, though at the time our Ethan was only 3, and we had no idea what parenting a preteen/teen would involve, what was normal. At the time we let Aaron go, I felt like we had failed him, that we had just made his problems worse, but this morning as I thought on Aaron, I realized that in the three years that he was here, we gave him every opportunity we could, we gave him the guidance he needed, taught him life's lessons that he had somehow missed in the years before arriving to us, we had done our part to put him down a better path, and we HAD to let him go, let him use his agency to forge his own way. We planted the seeds in his heart that one day they might grow and blossom. I wonder if he was sent to us during this time to be that beacon of light that his family will need at some point, if it is his mission to bring them simple and beautiful truths when they need them, when they are ready. I was thinking about the path of sorrow and anguish this child is traveling right now and feeling unreasonably responsible....I think this is a common mistake that parents make during their childrens' adolescence, and then it cam to me Our vision is so limited, we tend not to look at the bigger picture, of the hope that we have given them and take there mistakes as our own personal failings. I do hope that one day, maybe many years from now that Aaron will think on the things he learned here and that he will treasure them and exemplify them and share them with those he loves.