Another Mother’s Day has come and gone and Father’s Day has too. We don’t have a special day called Children’s Day yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. If you are a parent, you probably already realize that Children’s Day is everyday. This blog is dedicated to parents whose hearts are broken because their child is struggling or hurting and as parents we can’t fix it. This type of anguish is like acid in our soul. It eats away at us and is always lurking on the fringes of our lives. We feel guilty enjoying our lives while our child is still suffering. We wait and wait and wait to exhale. It is so difficult to do nothing but pray and to let God handle it. Of course we don’t always know how to pray. We watch situations in our children’s lives play out while we know in our gut that it can’t end well; that there’s nothing but heartache down the road for them. We risk alienating them if we try to interfere, especially when they are adults. We want to be happy for them, but sometimes we are condoning unwise choices when we pretend to be in order to protect their feelings. We don’t always want to pray away their circumstances because trials, setbacks, pain and suffering can be great teachers if we allow it. We don’t want to assume that we know better than God, so we surrender to His will whatever that may be. We pray that God will draw them closer to Himself and then we watch as their lives continue to fall apart until He’s all they have left. And then we pray that they will realize that He is the source and cry out to Him in their suffering. As I wrote in a previous blog titled “On Being A Mom”, being a parent is one of the most difficult jobs that we will ever have. Sometimes bad things happen to our children that forever changes the trajectory of their life. Sometimes we lose them altogether. Sometimes we “miss it” because we become too consumed with self, work and the busyness of everyday life to notice when something is wrong. We ache for their struggles and would trade places with them if we could. But we can’t. There are some things that we just don’t have control over. Sometimes all we can do is to lighten up and to forgive ourselves knowing that we’ve done the best we could. I get a lot of inspiration from music. Lyrics are sometimes better than anything I could ever write in a blog. I heard this song by Ray Charles on Father’s Day and as a parent it makes me cry every time.