OUCH.. that was my heart!

Children.. we love them! We care for their every need until they can fly from the nest on their own. We give until we can give no more without thanks. We love and accept and support them through every endeavor, even the ones that we know in our heart are plain old stupid.

Being the mom of 8 living children, I am very aware of the pains involved in raising children. Kids will love you sometimes and other times break your heart. Sometimes breaking isn't enough and they stomp on it too... The love in a large family is wonderful, but what stinks about a large family is you have so many more children to stomp on that 'ol heart. When more than one at a time stomps, it hurts massively.

My oldest 4 children have a different father than the second 4. They know no other father than my ex-husband though and they have always called him "dad'. All 4 of them are angry with me lately. I imagine that they are upset about the divorce, even though they know well how miserable my life was with him. Not one will express to me what is making them so angry and unkind, which is about par for young men, I know. It's just hard to feel the brunt of their anger on my own. They make such unkind comments and they are very distant.

My heart knows that they love me and that they will come back to me, but that doesn't seem to help the pain I feel right now. I'm not looking forward to Christmas with all of them as it is right now. I can see it will be painful at best. I plan to continue to love them and let them know how much. I will be there as I always have been, through every crisis they have. It's always been me that they run to when they are stressed, brokenhearted or in need, and that will never change. Hopefully one day they will see the smooth transition that their father and I have made, and the way I continue to be there for him and respect the decision I made for their younger siblings that so deserve to have a real father before it's too late....