{"id":85,"date":"2016-03-22T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T07:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2018-01-26T01:26:30","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T01:26:30","slug":"forgiveness-starts-with-panda-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/forgiveness-starts-with-panda-express\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness Starts With Panda Express"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Jennifer Sturgis, HOYH Co-Founder\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, where are you? Are you here?\u201d the voice of my fourteen year old son echoed\u00a0into my phone. “Am I where?” I wondered, somewhat alarmed. \u201cI\u2019m on my way home from work. Where am I supposed to be?\u201d Then the blood drained from my face – his spring choir concert. It was today! It was supposed to be at 7:00, but due to a conflict with scheduling the building it had to be changed to 4:15. Who schedules a choir concert for 4:15 on a Friday afternoon? I had completely forgotten. I would have had to miss work for the third time this week. But I\u00a0had<\/em>\u00a0planned on going.<\/p>\n

I heard him\u00a0say, \u201cWhatever! I\u2019ll walk home!\u201d then the audible click. It went straight to voicemail when I tried to call back. I could feel his disappointment, along with my own; heavy and hot, sink down to my stomach and settle like a pit. My face flushed. How could I forget? Just completely NOT remember that was today?<\/p>\n

It had been a busy week, with counseling sessions, doctor appointments, parent\/teacher conferences – all of which had eaten into my work schedule, causing me to leave early or come late three different days. Since the end of the school quarter was approaching, our nights had been taken up by homework and assignments to finish or make up. The single-mom-with-four-kids scenario is a real thing. A constant struggle. But today, as was more and more often the case, I refused to use that as a hall pass.<\/p>\n

I have been working on being more forgiving with myself, but I found my mind filling with old negative self-talk. \u201cHow did I forget that? I can\u2019t do anything right! My poor kids\u2026all they have is ME and I\u2019m a mess! I can\u2019t do anything right! This is just one more instance where I\u2019m a FAIL as a mother. Why did God give me these four children when so often I just disappoint and let them down? It feels like a week doesn\u2019t go by where I don\u2019t fail in some kind of major way! What is WRONG with me? What kind of mother does this?\u201d<\/p>\n

You know. Just the usual, brutal guilt trip that comes along with motherhood. As I often do, I willingly took the ride into familiar waters.<\/p>\n

I pictured my son\u00a0walking home from school in his white dress shirt and black pants, feeling angry, embarrassed, and abandoned. It\u2019s not about the walk – it\u2019s just that his friends were riding home with their parents, who actually attended the concert. And it\u2019s not like choir is his favorite thing, anyway. He is more of an athlete and cares more about sports than singing. It\u2019s just that he thought I was coming. <\/em>He w<\/em>as counting<\/em> on me to be there. And I wasn’t there. The heaviness of that last sentence weighed on my shoulders like the story of my single parent life…<\/p>\n

His father\u00a0wasn\u2019t ever there for him. In fact, he was in jail again. Incarceration wasn\u2019t a new thing, just an embarrassing detail that occasionally changed. Somehow, knowing their dad was in jail was more upsetting to the kids than him being homeless, which is what he is when he’s not\u00a0in jail. And now his mother, the only person he had left to count on, forgot about his concert. So he had to walk home, alone.<\/p>\n

During that painfully quiet drive home, I was vaguely aware of how much I was probably over-dramatizing this in my mind, but I also realized that this was how it probably felt to my fourteen year old son.\u00a0Then, surprisingly, my mind did something different than what it usually often did. It stopped in the middle of my mental and emotional barrage of negativity, and allowed one forgiving thought to bubble up:\u00a0\u201cJen, you are doing the best you can. Your son\u00a0will forgive you. He knows you love him. You\u2019ve shown him that a thousand times in a thousand ways.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

I let that thought linger for a moment. It felt like truth. It didn\u2019t feel like an excuse. It resonated as reality. However, the truth of it didn\u2019t make my mistake go away in an instant. Amends still needed to be made and some steps need to be taken to use technology to better manage my incredibly busy calendar. But it felt like forgiveness was possible, not just by my son, but by me, too. I took a deep breath, and felt some of the heaviness lift from my heart.\u00a0<\/strong>I couldn\u2019t control my son\u2019s forgiveness, but I did have control over mine.<\/strong>\u00a0I could continue to beat myself up over\u00a0this, or I could find a thread of emotional realism and start from there. I smiled slightly as I realized that the progress I thought I\u2019d been making was actually, maybe, real.<\/p>\n

When I got home, I walked downstairs to his room, ignoring his short text that said \u201cJust leave me alone.\u201d I knew he was pretty upset. I sat next to him on his bed, where he wouldn\u2019t look at me. I sat quietly for a moment. Then I said to him, \u201cI have no excuse for forgetting about your concert today, honey. I had been looking forward to it all week, actually.\u201d I paused, letting that truth linger in the air. Deep breath again. \u201cI can\u2019t go back in time and change it. I missed it, and I don\u2019t get a re-do! There are two parts of this that I feel terrible about. One, the fact that I didn\u2019t get to see you perform leaves a void for me. I hate missing anything that you do. Two, the fact that I wasn\u2019t there for you, and then you had to walk home – leaves a void for you. I\u2019m so very sorry that I created both of those voids by forgetting today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silence.<\/p>\n

I took a risk and touched his arm, continuing, \u201cYou don\u2019t have to forgive me right now, but I hope you know that I am truly sorry and that I will try to find a calendar system that works on my phone with reminders to help me better manage everybody\u2019s stuff. I can\u2019t promise I\u2019ll be perfect but that will help me, a lot. And I also hope you know how much I love you and how important you are to me!\u201d<\/p>\n

Silence again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this doesn\u2019t change things, but why don\u2019t you let me know what you want for dinner. I\u2019ll let you choose whatever you want. You can stay mad, but you might as well get something out of this, right?\u201d I half-joked, hoping to lighten things a little. Still no response.<\/p>\n

Then I walked out of his room. I knew he would probably eventually forgive me, but I also\u00a0knew it wouldn\u2019t be right then. He likes to stay mad for a while. But I did accomplish what I wanted to, which was not make excuses by reading him the very valid reasons from my single-parent-hall-pass. Like, \u201cThere\u2019s only one of me and four of you kids and I can\u2019t be everywhere\u201d or \u201dLook at all the things I do for you\u201d. \u00a0And I didn\u2019t try to manipulate him out of his feelings by cajoling or blaming anything or anyone else. I validated how it felt to\u00a0him<\/em>\u00a0by respecting his feelings, took accountability for my mistake, and offered my sincere apology.\u00a0Then I let him decide how to feel about it<\/strong>. Deep breath again.<\/p>\n

All I have control over is my willingness to be accountable, to learn from my mistakes, and to teach my children to do the same. Maybe he\u2019ll stay mad at me for years, maybe he\u2019ll be scarred for life, (both of which I doubt) – but something positive can be found here. There is always <\/em>something to learn and something to teach from every parenting screw up.<\/p>\n

About ten minutes later, my phone beeped. His text simply said \u201cPanda.\u201d I smiled. I guess we\u2019re having Panda Express tonight, I thought.\u00a0That was either the first glimmer of forgiveness, or his hunger was now greater than his anger. Probably the latter.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s a start.<\/p>\n

I’ll take it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Jennifer Sturgis, HOYH Co-Founder\u00a0 \u201cMom, where are you? Are you here?\u201d the voice of my fourteen year old son echoed\u00a0into my phone. “Am I where?” I wondered, somewhat alarmed. \u201cI\u2019m on my way home from work. Where am I supposed to be?\u201d Then the blood drained from my face – his spring choir … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,12,8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-day-in-the-life","category-feel-it-to-heal-it","category-owning-my-story","category-shit-thats-just-hard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-21-at-3.32.54-PM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166,"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/houseofyourheart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}