Being a part of children’s lives can really be a try to your heart, mind, body, and spirit. There is so much you see in each child that they do not. The most difficult part of this is just making sure you do your part to keep them in the right path while you are given some control to take part of their journey.
I recall having a heart to heart talk with one of my students outside, genuinely understanding the worried eyes and the struggling spirit that couldn’t even remain seated.
In more or less words, I told the student, “Everyone carries something they wish they never had to. For whatever it is that is troubling you, I bet you I could tell you something about me that would blow it away. You just have to let go what you can’t control.”
I still recall the most sincere question that came out of this student’s heart and mind and out of their mouth. Without looking at me, the student took a deep breath and asked, “But how?”
All I could say was, “That’s a real question and I get that. All you have the power to do is try each day, each moment, each time. Relax. Breathe. Let go.”
This is not to say that my words made magic as the student continued to express anxiety and irritability throughout the year, most especially because that class followed lunch (what I am finding can be the catalyst for most anxiety of all the times in a school day). What I can say is that it helped me to hear myself speak the words.
Relax. Breathe. Let go. Sometimes easy to do. Sometimes, difficult or forgotten.
One doesn’t choose hard times. Hard times happen like rain on a perfectly sunny day. Sometimes, we can predict a storm. Sometimes, they come when moments seem the most perfect of all. Drills come into play because if no control can be given of the unanticipated, best to be ready when such times should arise. However, as I have done to take note, even discussions to prepare such possibilities can cause discomfort and worry.
I recall trying to be as quick, but as clear as possible on what to do if our house was on fire to our oldest three children. I was not surprised to see that at least one began to worry at the onset of the discussion.
The thought of such possibility clearly horrified one of our oldest three, if not all of them, with the other two remaining quiet.
We all express our fears differently in moments of thought, I realize myself, coming from a family of five children living to at least the age of 18. The biggest part of the fears, whether real or imagined, is letting go of the unwanted within the heart, mind, body, and spirit. That false evidence appearing real can truly take a hold on anyone.
You know your children before they are born. At least I have always felt this way. As I have said, my children’s personalities oozed out of me when I carried them and thus, I have always felt them even when they were no longer physically connected to me. My children have lived the wonderment of life, the beauty and peace about it. However, at a stumble, fall, or change in tune, difficulty in accepting the challenge to move on is stifling to a soul who has yet to learn how to overcome.
Some of us internalize our fears, working it out with the hopes along with determination to one day have the fear go away. Some of us seem to outwardly be most in fear and yet, because of having worked out the fear out loud over and over, they may be the one who will not know what to do when the possibility of what they feared actually happens. Then, there are those of us that when calamity occurs, we are most calm and in control, fearless of what could happen or become from it all.
I truly believe I have become each one of these in my life. I see all three in my children and my students, sharing the same lack of desire for danger or hazards, but reacting differently when such occur.
As a child, I paved back and forth, at times, plugging my ears with my fingers, singing a tune to myself to mute out my auditory sense, while simultaneously closing my eyes. This helped only a bit to escape, while at the same time knowing that the unwanted had not gone away and eventually, I would have to face the wrath of what I was trying to ignore or escape from.
At the time I was in junior high, I held my ground as being seen as fearless by loudly expressing my thoughts toward my peers. When understanding the need for silence, I carried a notebook around, writing to myself to continue on my thoughts when not able to verbally and outwardly express them.
By my teenage adolescence time, I would either become very recluse, always wanting to lock myself in my room, even to a point of getting a job to pay for my own phone line just so I could separate myself from any energy outside my room. With my peers, I would either find myself in the library alone (I found comfort in the library from elementary to college- the quietest place I could ever find) or arbitrarily commune with others when inescapable.
I see my children. I see my students. I feel and hear their words. Though every journey cannot be duplicated, created only for the one meant to walk in the shoes, I laughingly tell myself while at times taking deep breaths between feelings of defeat, but doubtful of ever coming to surrender, “I was trained for this moment.”
Letting go is not a release of power. Letting go is rather gaining more power each time you breathe and take in the good of life so as to breathe out any that is the contrary.
Letting go is knowing the acceptance of pain is real and hurt sometimes is described as “hell” and understood. I reckon no one has ever visited that actual place and returned, but to our own description of it, levels of such can be understood with great empathy. And perhaps, like sectors in prison, there are those that categorically can say they have seen it, lived it, or sadly, caused hell upon themselves or others.
Letting go is a must to the carrier of the burden for in reality, whether inflicted by someone else or self-inflicted, the weight is upon the heart, mind, body, and spirit of the one who cannot let go. Taking one step forward out of darkness simply is a choice in the right direction to come closer to the light. One step at a time, like Harriet Tubman finally arriving out of her escape, she then realized she withheld the map and thus, the incredible power to help others out just the same.
I think to myself how many fall into darkness with others simply because they allowed the dwellers of darkness to stay too long within their realm. One could have easily worked their way out of darkness, but when surrounding yourself with those who not only are unknowingly or not consciously accepting to still be in their own shackles of darkness, one finds themselves now shackled themselves.
Letting go takes so much more strength than surrendering. There are so many voices around that have given you comfort at your time of need that you may now feel you owe still your loyalty to. Sadly, those were only there because they saw a commonality of your predicament, weakness that they withhold.
Weakness is sometimes people’s greatest attribute and strength. They can sell it to you like water when you are at greatest thirst. And when you drink, you feel replenished, saved from wretchedness, taken from the pit you thought you were in.
Whether you were or just hardly in a ditch you didn’t realize you could have easily jumped out of, that water you drank had a hook to it, pulling you back in to think you need those who gave you that drink when you were simply parched. It was water you needed, not them. A Good Samaritan asks or expects nothing in return.
I distinctly recall a story much too familiar to many of us about someone being tempted after having fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. No matter the hardship or momentary suffering for greater sacrifice, the power to turn stone to bread, receive kingdoms, or be saved by angels if to jump is power within already given you.
Moments are scary when we find ourselves threatened of our safety or well-being. This is real. No one should tell another fear is fake, only that evidence of what has yet to happen is false until proven true. Interestingly, in the fixation of what is feared, there are those who work to make such false evidence become the very truth.
Thankfully, what is also real is faith- things hoped for even if not seen. What we set our mind to is the direction we are heading toward. That step forward, whether walking, running, or even falling forward, takes you to just that- the present, the gift, of strength to morrow.
Letting go can be difficult, yes. Especially if there are those who want you to fall back or stay within their dwelling. And yet, power of control is within you to just RBL.
Relax. Breathe. Let go.
You will not fail as long as you keep repeating. And when you get to the part where you will lead others out of their own shackles, you will remember to tell yourself…
“I was trained for this moment.”
