Alright, Okay, You Win

A few weeks ago now someone told me something that I just haven't been able to shake. "Where are your kids? What would they think of you being here?"  I immediately got defensive and pulled my well used, "Between bedtime and breakfast is my time..." line.  But I haven't been able to shake it, why?  Because this fool was right.  I hate that.  But... he was right.

I was watching Megan today during church and she was putting on my sunglasses and picking up my keys and goes, "I Mommy!"  She's watching me like a hawk.  She knows every move I make.  Then I looked at her at lunch and was just so humbled that I was given such a perfect little girl to raise.

Megan and Bailey deserve so much more.

So, if I have to make sacrifices, I need to.  That's what parenting is.  If I'm lonely, I'm lonely.  If I'm home on a Saturday night, without any friends, so be it.  Sure I may only be gone after bedtime but that still has an effect on my parenting, it just does.  I need to straighten up and I don't have a single excuse that's good enough.  Yes, it's been a tough year and a half but no one's life is perfect.

I've been here before I literally sacrificed everything for my family and it didn't get me very far.  I was incredibly lonely.  Thankfully I had a few really close friends that came running when I needed them.  And I swore I would never lose so much of myself again because people need people and not just there family.  I had this mentality that I have a family now, no one else matters.  No, they do.  The right people, in the right proportion.  And I have no intention of ditching my friends in order to be a better parent, there has to be a balance, I've seen what an unbalanced life can become.

Being lonely was tough, but when it gets hard I always go back to the old song, "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand."  Nothing's ever been more true.  I remember listening to this when Pop was in the hospital and just realizing, I have nothing else that I can cling to, nothing.  All other ground really is sinking sand, whatever that is for you.  Whether it's a drug addiction, a relationship, your job, it's all sinking sand. 

There's only one solid rock.  And that solid rock is the only way I'm not going to totally fail my little girls.