When you can’t take their pain away

D Oyou know that just being there for someone can sometimes bring hope when all else feels hopeless. It’s not always about resources or material that one needs during a challenging time in their lives.

Sometimes it can just be listening or talking that can be comforting.

Parents, if I were to ask you what your worst nightmare is, what would you say? I would believe you would just like me say, ‘to watch or know my child is suffering,’ an extension of that being and to not be able to do anything to help or take it away.”

If you’re not a parent, I’m guessing you’re felt this same way about someone else you’ve loved, so a lot of this probably applies to you as well. Let’s focus for a minute on the illness angle, as that is where most of us feel so helpless whenever our loved ones are in that space.

As a matter of fact, I have a personal experience where my daughters had to watch me in pain and I could tell by looking at them that they somehow wished they took all the pain I was in, sadly it was not to be the case but all that mattered at that point was just them holding my hand in a time where I felt at my lowest.

I knew that they could not take away my pain, but the love I felt from them made a huge difference.

Illness is a painful reality for millions of people around the world. It doesn’t matter whether that illness is something as seemingly mild as the common cold, or something far more threatening on the health scale, for a parent to watch their child get sick

TILLNESS

HERE are tales that we were supposed to have heard because those stories could have really enlightened our walk in life. We could have known how to handle certain situations.

Then we could have learnt from them. However, these tales about our families’ and our nation were never revealed. It is easier to walk in a path that was revealed. The journey becomes lighter because you sort of know what to expect and when to expect it.

We are a generation that searches for answers in the dark, while there were people who could have told us, where they were defeated, and where they fell short, because this could have given us knowledge that empowers. We could have been better equipped for the future but instead, of doing that, they wallowed in shame.

The shared tales about their glory years.

What I am saying may not sound simple for others, but honestly if we knew where the ditches that they fell in were, we would build bridges instead.

Certain things could have honestly been avoided and I believe they can still be avoided, if we want to change the direction and destiny of our own children. and suffer, it’s not a situation that anyone wants.

They are forced to put on a brave face and shove down the feelings that threaten to bubble over at any point; fear, sadness, guilt, anger, helplessness, frustration, and exhaustion are mostly all the feelings that engulf one during that time.

I always feel I have such brave young girls as my daughters, they have watched me overcome adversity and shine, time and time again.

But then again on the flip side I feel for them as they had to face the underlying realities of my situation despite my vibrant smile, the ongoing pain and life challenges.

Actually, when a person is ill, the whole family

I’m talking about the lessons that life taught them after they had wrong turns.

Those times where they were deceived, hurt, betrayed and betrayed others, the reasons for their actions, because those reasons become reality pillars of understanding our own behaviours in the future.

Truth is not overrated.

Truth liberates period. However, we shy away from the truth because somehow it causes us to revisit our belief systems and it shakes the core of everything we have believed in since childhood.

It’s hard for us to accept that we feels the pain.

During a time of illness, the healthy family members are often overworked, physically and mentally, particularly if they have assumed caregiver responsibilities, all of which is compounded by the helplessness they feel when they are unable to provide relief to the family member in distress.

It’s just a sad reality, just like they can’t walk a mile in shoes of the one in pain, the one in pain can’t walk a mile in theirs. Our shoes are unique. They fit only us. What a life lesson this is though. I know though that because parents love their children so deeply, they would make any sacrifice required to take their hurt away and make it all might have inherited brokenness, and misshaped values and norms as an accepted reality devoid of the truth.

There is such a big difference with regards to the way we perceive things in adulthood as compared to our childhood considerations and deliberations on issues if we had known the entire truth including.

Those unspoken truths, would have been like an assisting help or guide through life.

I’m an adult now but I’m still unlearning a lot of blur perceptions that were shaped in depth but childhood stories and choices that were mostly uninformed.

To any parents reading this or to anyone who’s feeling the agony of being unable to heal their loved one’s pain, please do your upmost to release yourself from these mental shackles. I know that the mind is very cruel at times, if you allow it unchained freedom, and it will keep you stuck in a place of sadness that serves neither you nor your child.

You can’t be there for them, or anyone else, if you’re lost in your head, beating yourself up for not being able to do more.

Take it easy you are doing the best you can. Why compound your pain with unnecessary guilt?

To my daughter, please know this, I might have equipped you with everything you need in this life but sadly you can’t take away my pain, but you can be happy that you gave me the strength and the will to persevere. You can’t take away my obstacles, but you can be there, physically and emotionally, to guide me, to hold out a hand, to lift me up when I fall down, to be my biggest cheerleaders. Sometimes, all you can do is be there.

And just being there might be enough.

I fully understand though how impactful the way we perceive things in the past can fully result in misinformed decisions about current situations, for instance, there are people who still think its wisdom to deny things in their relationships because the truth might cost them the relationship.

This is why husbands hide children they have conceived outside their marriages and some wives equally deny children they had before marriage. The problem is I don’t know who told them that as long as it is unknown it’s safe.

And they have believed it for such a long time such that some people are not even willing to test the truth. Whenever you have believed a lie, you are then blinded to the truth. However, the truth is nothing really works properly for a parent who denies and does not maintain their children.

VALUES

better.

The question becomes, what happens when you really cannot take away their pain, despite all the wishing and heartfelt sentiments?

When you really cannot remove your child’s obstacles, in whatever form they may take?

I can’t imagine the agony, anger, guilt, frustration, helplessness, powerless and the numerous of other emotions that parents feel and continue to feel, when they think about their children’s challenges in life. A parent is supposed to take away all of her child’s obstacles.

Truthfully, that is an unrealistic burden to place upon yourself.

The struggles become limitless for someone who ignored or deny children. Now that’s a lesson that should be passed on.

When the truth is untold, people live their lives thinking less of the repercussions of their actions because those whom they lived with and grew up looking up to, never told them their struggles with the kinds of decisions that they made.

So they lived pretending that their lives were glorious and that taught the younger generation to think less also of the repercussions of their actions. The unseen heroism that really never existed is such a shame for this generation to even imagine.

Every hero falls at some point and a hero fails at some point and a hero has weaknesses also, and a hero must learn from others also.

However, these heroes of our past

HEALTHY FAMILY MEMBERS

never seem to have had flaws.

These crakes are discovered by this generation and it is always devastating to say the least, because their rise and fall becomes unclear as a path to be followed.

There are certain stories in our upbringing that use to hide the truth in tails.

Some of the people who told these stories knew that there was some unrevealed truths about the tales to deter certain behaviours, but somewhat those stories instilled fear and never transformed our awareness and wisdom intake.

This is why we often feel some sort of way when confronted with the truth from an unexpected minor.

Truthfulness is literally a space they never even considered yet, it’s liberating to come fully open about everything and occupy a space of acceptance the way you are.

ACCEPTED

The truth is we carry a lot of uncertainties because we have never thought we can be fully accepted the way we are.

So we have learnt to present a front that really never last.

Somewhat our past has taught us to tell people what they want to hear, it’s so sort of a way out of trouble.

We have sort of learnt to be present a lie and even represent a lie and own a lie.

I believe if we can share truth, even if it means taking a risk. Sometimes we believe if we share truth we will lose but by sharing the truth we gain the trust of people that we never thought they could.

We may need to accept that God can establish a family, a nation even a relationship in truth. If anything requires the Lord to fix or restores, it can only be in that space of truthfulness and nothing else.