Dear Friends,
I’m celebrating my daughter, Maddie’s, birthday this weekend. We’re doing it a week early since she’s supposed to be at her Dad’s next weekend. She turns fourteen on 4/18.
Hard to believe! Maddie was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when she was 5 days old.
She has always been very healthy. She has the normal CF cough and does daily percussion drainage treatments and takes enzymes before each meal. Other than that, her life is pretty normal. She full of energy and loves to dance. I rarely ever hear her complain about her CF. I have always had a tendency to want to control her, mostly out of fear and the need to protect her. The more I grow up, the less I need to control her.
I am beginning to realize that she has her own life path, and truly she is not my child. She belongs to God, as we all do. So when I see her create suffering for herself, I have to consciously remind myself to back away and let her go through it. As a coach, I will make her aware of empowering philosophies and techniques and beliefs. It’s up to her, however, to adopt the beliefs and pick up the techniques. I’d be lying if I said I was perfectly detached from her pain. But if I’m really brutally honest with myself, isn’t it my pain that I guard against? I don’t feel good when she is hurting. If I should witness her death, I don’t want to go through the pain of losing her and the loneliness I would feel to no longer see her bright smiling face and beautiful blue eyes.
What comforts me is knowing that we’re never really apart or separate. We live in each others’ hearts and minds. None of us is guaranteed a long life. This came as a shock to me because I plan on living healthily to age 100. I am quite serious. But….maybe God has other plans for me. So for today, I practice gratitude that I am alive in this body and can smell the fragrant blooms of spring and can hug my daughter. I can remember her day of birth like it was yesterday. All is well.
Happy Birthday, Maddie, my beautiful,
precious daughter!
Love,
Angie
