Peace...

I love the sign language motion for the word peace. I have seen it done two different ways. One showed what looked like a storm and by making an agitated motion with the hands, and then moving them down and out, to symbolize settling down, or calming.

The other one, I have seen more often, is the hands tapped first right on left, then left on right, like a cross, meaning to become, and then the same down and out motion, meaning to settle. To become settled.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and reading about peace...or the lack of peace. How easy our internal seas can rock. With reading about helping children with traumatic pasts, and how they become stressed and over-stimulated in many situations has really made me think about so much of our daily life.

I remember reading one mother on a blog saying her daughter's therapist said, after a long trip in which the daughter was really stressed and upset, that just because your car can go there, it does not mean that your daughter can go their emotionally.

Isn't that the truth!!???? I find that is true of ANY child, not just a child who has had a hard past. As an adult, I look on the weekends for something out of the ordinary to do, a little stimulation, and just woke up to realize, what I have been experiencing. My craving for some stimulation is dropping a boatload of over-stimulation to my kids. And I kept wondering why it never turned out as I hoped, and why they acted up. Just because my car (and momma) could go there, does not mean they could emotionally.

I have seen, in reading Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control (still in the middle of it), that all my children are children of trauma in one way or another. Being in a divorced family, having a momma that was working through her own brokenness (still is a lot of the time) and not as wise and attuned to their needs/challenges, and then each of them, in their pain acting out their brokenness on each other..... yes, they all have experienced trauma that has led to attachment challenges in varying degrees....to them acting out of a stress/fear mode.

Eye opening, heart breaking. yet, Hallelujah, thank you Lord, for some light that makes sense. Seeing some of the behavior for what it is... (I am a broken momma of broken children) ...brings with it hope and faith that there can be healing. That we can move from this place of fear/stress/brokenness to a place of love. A place where stress is responded to with love and fear has less of a hold. A place of becoming settled, calm...Peace.

My heart aches with ones reaction, swells with joy when another tries, yet inside I turn to my prince of peace. I do not have to fix it, I do not have to solve my children. I cannot heal them. I can help. I can influence to move us toward a more healing environment. I can pray pray pray. I can learn what I can. I can stay so connected to my loving Savior that his love fills me, so I respond in love, not in disappointment and frustration. I can do that.

Even today, I spied a few healing moments. I cut my daughters hair (brave of me, I know) and what a blessing it turned out so cute. She was so proud of her hair..and after nap, I let her take a bubble bath in my big tub. Earlier when she was frightened at lunch, rather than getting frustrated or irritated at her over-reaction. I put her on my lap. Hugged her, let her cry and soothed her. I too often had used the stiff upper lip, buck it up, its ok, type mentality. But in the last couple of days, have moved to the compassion, if it hurts you then I need to pay attention to it. And just in one day....I have seen some realness from her. Some real joy. Some real love. Some real connection. In one day! yes, we have far to go. yes we have tons of behaviors I pray will drop by the wayside. But in one day, we have had some real moments of love.

With one of my sons, in a couple other situations today, my heart was crushed by actions and reactions. By sneakiness and lying, by lying about the lying, by no remorse on the lying, by anger toward any type of sadness or guilting I had regarding the lying, and about an irritation and disdain for the word of God. Ok. I know. That could really be alarming. Might really be alarming to some. But, although it made my heart ache, although my mind wanted to first (out of my own fears) move into the lecture mode, the YOU DON"T LIE mode, into the EAT GOD"S WORD!!! mode and LIKE IT.... I didn't do that. His actions and reactions just showed me the depth of his pain, the depth of his fear and brokenness. I let him know my sadness, how it hurt to find out he lied, but let it stop at that. I did not try to force a remorse out of him that he did not feel. See, his heart needs healing first. He needs loved to the place of not living in fear, even a deep buried fear, before he is ready to even want to grasp what lying does to a relationship and what the word can do for your soul. So I hug, I pray. I stop what I am doing to play a game. You should have seen his delight. When he asked, fully expecting the "sorry I'm busy answer" and got the "Sure, set it up!". We played. He was delighted with the 1 on 1 attention. And, even when I discovered his lying to try to win. I did not stop the game. I did not even make him set things right. (Oh my gosh!). I let him know my sadness. I gave him the choice of what to do and we continued playing. The enthusiasm was not as high, it dampened the joy, you could feel the pain impact on our relationship, but I did not bail on him. I did not punish him. He will not be solved by one lecture, by a punishment, by an abandonment consequence. Love will open his heart and the way for God to pour in His healing.

Hard stuff. Hard for me to do, when logic says pounce and consequence. Love says write in the dirt, with eyes of compassion, forgive and be gently patient for all to "become settled."

Our peace, in each little soul, and in my momma soul, will not come overnight. But I trust the peacemaker, who has made a way for us and is all the time working on our behalf to will and to do according to His will. That trust in Him brings me peace and brings me the ability to perhaps do things a different way. To move my interactions with my children from under the Old Testament law, to the New Testament practice of grace.

I don't know what I am doing. But He does.

I just know I love them to pieces. I long for peace in their broken hearts....and I am not giving up on any of them...until it all becomes settled.