Where have all the children gone?

Or rather the Mom's of adult children.  I'm an avid reader, online and in life. I devour books and I read multiple blogs daily.  Many, no actually all, of the blogs that I read about motherhood are from the viewpoint of mothers whose children are still young.  Usually 14 or younger.  I feel like fourteen is sort of a cut off date. After that we, as mothers, know that our children are heading into their teenage years. And we remember those years. We know how chaotic they are, how you feel like you don't fit in anywhere. I know if the internet had been around when I was a teenager, and my mom made a post about me. Well I would have just "died."

So I get it. I understand why the blogs are all from mommy's who have young children and why they go (mostly) silent about their children during the teenage years and beyond. I think, though, that it's also because we're ashamed. When your child is little and makes a mess all over the house, well heck, every parent has dealt with that.  Or when your elementary school child needs help with homework that you don't understand.  Been there, done that.  But when our children become teenagers, we start to think they will magically morph into pillars of society who will rarely, if ever, do anything wrong.  And telling the world that our child messed up (read, "is human") is a super scary thing. Because if they're messing up then I'm obviously a horrible parent, right?

There is no way that a good parent would have a kid who lies to them, who sneaks out in the middle of the night, who drank before the legal drinking age, or (God forbid) who cusses like a sailor.  That isn't what a good kid looks like. Especially a good Christian kid. Being a Christian isn't especially hard.  Being what society thinks is a Christian is almost impossible. When you have children who are now adults, who aren't what society thinks a christian should be, it's even harder.  I'm still a mama bear. Even though one of my cubs has a cub of his own, I still want to protect them.

I am the worst at keeping up with my blog.  It's mostly a place where I share my random thoughts, my grief over my mother, and my never ending battle with weightloss.  But I want to try and start sharing stories with you about my children.  Most of you who read this right now have young children. But one day they won't be young. And maybe you'd like a place to go to read stories and think to yourself, "hmm, someone else went through this too. Maybe we're not so different"  Because in the end, I don't think we are. We're just afraid to share.