Mothering teenagers!!

I am having those dilemmas that I am caring parents have had over the years - how much to get go, how much to trust, how much of one's intuition does one run with and how much does one give to God. And actually the trust thing for me comes down to how much do I trust God with my children, who really are not children any more but becoming young adults who I want to release into the world just right. And also how do I put all my concerns into a positive blog. Not that one should be blindly positive but I do know that God cares for Ben and Tabi even more than I do. And I also know that some of my anxieties are that I am having to let go of them, having to find something that is not them to fill my life. For me being a single parent has brought me to a place with my 2 where I have probably been overly protective and also where we have been very close. I think we are still very close now but at times I feel sad that they have other people they are close to - which I also know is right and proper.
But this on Brian Heasley's (Ibizia) blog has really helped. It from a retreat he was on and the quote is by Henri Nouwen.

"Sometimes we have to "step over" our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there. Then we become the "offended one", the "forgotten one", or the "discarded one". Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them. It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on."

And I know it means more, much more, than coping with empty nest syndrome and trusting God with our children, but for me it is that whole thing of poking around with negative emotiosn that can be so tempting, to go into a place that is so unhealthy - either from imaging what they could be up to or from letting feelings of life not being as I envisioned, stuff like that. I need to give this all to God and let Him deal with it and not go poking around in it all.
And there will come a moment when they will travel on to wherever life has planned for them and my holding on to them will be no good for them or me.

and also what I like is that God can stick this in to someone else's life and it speaks to me so much, even if in a totally different way to what it was intend to!