Irrational Fears and Anxiety

Here's a Freebie Friday for you and by "freebie" I don't mean I'm giving you anything, sorry for the confusion.  It's just an extra blog post.  Feeling cheated? Sorry!

Deep breaths!  We can do this.

I have a fabulous new friend here in Idaho.  She's a mom, she has 4 older boys, and has served overseas as a missionary for a LONG time.  (Not saying she's old, she's just awesome!)

She has made a special point of welcoming me to Idaho and has gone the extra mile, calling me every week and coming to visit.  She talks to my kids and they know who she is.  That's a huge factor in wrapping my mind around leaving Kees with someone.  Kora goes to nursery at church, but Kees has extreme anxiety if I mention being a part, even for an hour.

I know, I know.  Many of you have been separated from your kids on a regular basis since they were very young.  And we did that with Kees as well, until he was 18 months and we moved to Thailand.  One earthquake, flood, and major life altering scary surgery later, and both Kees and I have separation anxiety. 

Sweet Kora, not so much.  She's a trooper, loves going to nursery, and doesn't look back. And I don't worry about her.  If she's happy, I'm happy.  And there's the trouble, the anxiety Kees experiences breaks my heart. 

Am I oversensitive? Absolutely! Irrational, at times? Yep. Doing the very best I can for my kids? I sure hope so.

That being said, I have wanted to help Kees be more independent, but also not wanted to push him.  I've learned that Kees does things on his own time table, and has an innate desire to be "good".  He's never trying to be obstinate, many times he's insecure, has a fear of failure, fear of the unknown, and gets overwhelmed in new surroundings or with large groups of people.

And as a mom, there's a lot of that I can relate to, and then, there's the question of pushing the issue or stepping back.  You can only focus on so many things at once, and a good deal of my last year has quite frankly been survival.

Now that we are settling, making friends, and making new familiar surroundings, it's time to address some of these things.  But it's still scary.  So having a friend like Lavonne that goes out of their way to be your friend, when you feel like a mess and a failure, that means something!

She's mentioned a couple of times that she'd be happy to watch our kids for us.  And I've desperately wanted to take her up on it, but wasn't sure when or how to make it happen.  This week, when she visited, she just said, "How 'bout Friday?  You can just run to the store or whatever, and if Kees doesn't calm down, I'll call you."  That's exactly what I needed, someone to really mean it, and set a time. She also told me she had a dirt pile the kids could play with and that she'd give them popsicles. Score!

As soon as she left, I told Kees the plan.  He cried, real tears, and clung to me like I was going to take my last breath any minute.  By some miracle, I did not crumple and cry with him.  I just said, "It's gonna be fine.  You are in control of a lot of what happens.  Would you like to have Kora with you or go by yourself?  Should I go for one hour or two?  How many cars would you like to take with you? Lavonne said there's a dirt pile to drive your cars on!  Would you like Lavonne to take you to the park or just play in her backyard?"  Talking about it in practical terms and making a plan calmed him down.  He answered my questions, and then he was fine. And every day after that, he kept talking about it, he seemed excited.  I went to the Dollar Tree and bought the kids, bug catcher kits, I let Kees look at them and told him they were for using in Lavonne's backyard.  He loved that idea, and kept reminding me so I wouldn't forget.  Every day during our calendar time we talked about which day it was that he'd stay at Lavonne's to play.  Then, last night we made cookies for her as a thank you gift.

I thought it was all going to be fine, until this morning. As soon as he woke up, he started crying and said he didn't want me to go.  But I NEED to go, he NEEDS to learn to trust that I'll come back.  Not gonna lie, as he was crying I was thinking, can I do this???  What if we die in a car accident and we don't ever come back!?  I stayed strong outwardly, and reminded him it was just an hour and he'd have fun.  We got packed up. Kees reminded me to get their new toys and the cookies.  And we headed out the door.  We picked up Doug on the way.

We dropped them off quickly, Kees cried, Lavonne promised she'd text if he didn't calm down.  And guess what? We survived!  We got a text quickly to let us know he was playing and happy.  Whew!  And we made it back to pick them up within the hour we had promised Kees, not that I'm sure he noticed.  We honked when we pulled in the driveway and neither of the kids broke their stare from the Mickey Mouse Club House. They barely acknowledged us when we walked in.  I'll take it!!!

We made progress today.  And I'm good with that. We still have lots of steps to take, but I'm not focusing on where we need to go, but how far we've come.

I share this, even though I realize it exposes a lot of my flaws and inadequacies as a mother.  But I want my kids to know, some day, that no matter what my shortcomings are, I am always trying to improve and do my very best for them.  And I absolutely do not have all the answers.  I'm not sure where their opinion will fall, they may think I was a crazy lady that made their life difficult or I was some perfect little homemaker.  I'm neither of those things, well maybe one of those things (the first one!).  I make mistakes, lots of mistakes, and I do my best to learn from them and never give up on myself or them.