Lesson #1 - When to bend my knees.

The 10 most important things I have learned in the past 12 months...(Part 10).

Today I celebrate an entire year of an incredible journey of sharing my parenting life with all of you.  I now look back at over 150 posts that one by one gave birth to an amazing relationship between us all.  To be honest it never occurred to me in the beginning that so many of you would take the time to read these pages.  At the most I expected only my closest relatives and a few friends to be interested, and yet a huge array of individuals have crossed through these pages of love and hope from many different parts of the world.  There is a small feature in my pages that allows me to know how many times somebody has tuned into read one of my stories, and another one that gives me an idea of the general area where they are at when they do so.  Do not worry, your visits are anonymous and not even I am privy to the actual individuals that come in to visit.  The United States of America, Kenya, Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Greece, Netherlands, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, France, Russia, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Italy, and my dear Puerto Rico are all just a few locations that I can name off the top of my head that have been shown to read this blog.  Something else the feature tells me is whether the visitor came in directly or by doing a search online and then clicking your way into my pages.  Surprisingly, many of you that originally showed as just wandering in, later on kept coming back to share with me some more.  I am aware that when something is very popular its online content can reach millions of visitors a year.  That was truly not my goal at all, yet I am still amazed that over 3,700 times somebody has been driven to read these excerpts of my life as a father.  Today, twelves months after beginning this path of bare honesty and and many times brutal truth sharing, I sit humbled by your interest and support.  I celebrate quietly while typing away on a computer on board the mighty USS Cape St. George, where again destiny has taken me for a ride because of my job.  It is almost ten o'clock in the evening, but today I want to share with you the number one lesson I have learned in the past 12 months.  Read and enjoy!

Lesson #1 - When to bend my knees.

As a young boy my family did a lot of moving around because of my father being part of the U.S. Air Force.  Us kids that have lived this kind of life are called Air Force brats, a term of which I am quite fond regardless of its possible original intent.  In my lifetime we lived in England, Arkansas, Arizona, and back and forth to Puerto Rico in between every move.  My mother was always a teacher in whatever school we attended while growing up, giving up a career with much better retirement benefits from the public school system by always teaching in the private sector in order to be with us and keep us in better schools.  By private sector I really mean Catholic schools, which brings me to the next part of this story.

At age seven, since my mother was always an early bird getting to school at least an hour before classes would commence, and not having much more else to do, I attended Catholic mass every morning during the week.  Soon enough just watching these services did not fulfill my curiosity so I became an altar boy for more of a hands on experience.  Every morning at the crack of dawn I went into the St. Vincent de Paul church, put on the white garment that seemed the appropriate size for my scrawny little body, and served as an altar boy in mass.  I really enjoyed doing this and it took very little sacrifice on my end to participate.  I believe that it was this early interaction with God that put in my heart the desire for me to be a good son.  As a child my parents gave us very little choice of whether we would attend mass on Sundays or not, so unless you were on your death bed, odds were favor that you would be bending your knees for a while that day.  The funny thing is, no matter how much that act of humility might of hurt, it grew on me as a sign of what it took for God to listen.  I know what you might be thinking, those Catholic rituals are probably totally unnecessary in order to make a phone call to heaven, but the truth is that we all  grew up with different habits and it is very doubtful we will change them that much later on in life.  What can I tell you about bending my knees?  To begin with, you have to understand that in my religion, talking to God is serious business.  I do not take it lightly when I decide to get in touch with the Big Kahuna, the fact of the matter is that if I am going to dial 911 for help upstairs, I am definitely going to do it my way.

Life found a way to do what it does best, throw me curve balls on every single important pitch.  My marriage was a prime example that life took its sweet time in teaching me how to get it right.  In fact, it took me so long that it eventually cost me my marriage.  Then again, life could of given me two kids that were perfectly wired and ready to challenge me in all the different ways it does to the average parent.  However, there too life decided to throw a fast ball with a really good spin on it so it would slide right under my bat by giving me what I find to be a REALLY challenging older son.  As I have said before, if it were not for my younger son, I might of never known that my oldest son was so different.  This time however, I did not proceed in the same way that I did during my marriage.  Instead of trying to figure it all out on my own, I found it totally necessary to dial up the Boss and ask him for help.  It's a really good thing that I did, otherwise there would definitely not be much left of me today in order to be writing this post for all of you.

The most important lesson I have learned during these past 12 months is that I am not in control of my son's life.  If I was, I would of been able to straighten out everything that is twisted without any help.  This lesson is a hard one to swallow and much harder to accept.  I do not have the power to change my son.  In fact, I do not have the power to change anyone else but myself.  So if I am going to take on the job of trying to be a better father, I might as well figure out who it is that has the ability to make any real changes around my kids.  In my incredibly stubborn and surprised mind I have come to accept the role of facilitator as a parent, and not that of an enforcer and much less a dictator.  How is it that I am so sure that God is the only one that is in control and has the power to help my son?  Because when I have given it my all, and I really mean my "all," I have seen myself fail miserably many, many times.  So much have I failed in my quest of being an effective parent that I've found myself way too often bending my knees and assuming the position of humble prayer begging for God to intervene and help me out.  I can tell you that without a doubt, every single time I have done so, I have received God's grace in one way or the other pulling me through those difficult moments.  I might scream and yell at the world for the injustice that I feel by being hurt so deeply when my son has pointed a knife at me, or spit in my face in a moment of rage.  However, those desperate words that depart my from the bottom of my heart and soul have never done me any good.  Instead, one day, when I was pacing around in my room like a caged lion from side to side waiting to find the strength in me to carry on after an incredible hurtful moment with my child, my knees came off of their walking position and they took me down to the ground as I finally gave into accepting that only God could get me through that moment.  I would be lying if I told you that from one desperate prayer all of the solutions to my problems came flowing from heaven.  I would be exaggerating if I told you that instantly I found peace in my heart and soul after calling up to my Lord for answers.  However, what is the God honest truth is that He definitely got me through those incredibly painful moments by filling my mind with a true understanding of my son's condition and putting inside my heart a great deal of love to be able to get through it all a little bit at a time.

Everyone is free to deal with their challenges in any way they seem fit.  All I can tell you is that it was not until I turned over this incredibly difficult parenting challenge to God, that I started to see through it all.  The best way I can describe it would be to say:

"Imagine an incredibly dark forest in which every branch in the night seems to be reaching out to grab you and scare you to death.  As you wander aimlessly through the darkness you find yourself lost and confused.  You try to build a fire but every branch you reach out to is either wet or too green for them to ignite with the only box of matches that you have in your pockets.  Soon it starts to get colder and no matter how prepared you thought you were with the garments you put on in the morning the chilling air finds a way to filter itself inside and make you shiver.  You call out for everyone you thought that might be there to get you through this darkness, yet the only thing you hear back is your own echo as it bounces off nearby rocks and more.  You've heard of others not making it through this dark forest either because they were lost and never found again, or somebody else later finds their carcases huddled up inside a hollow tree where they were trying to stay warm and survive.  Just as you think that there is no hope and you too will end up inside the belly of some ravaging creature, you finally see a very dim light at the other side of what seems to be the edge of the forest.  Tell me my dear friends, what would you do next?  Would you ignore the light and stay put in hopes that somebody else will come and rescue you?  Would you pretend that the light was not really there and keep looking for something else?  I somehow doubt that you would do any of the above choices.  The logical and instinctive thing to do would be to march on towards the light in hopes that it might be shelter or something that could save you from your impending doom.

I've found hope in my solitude and prayers.  I truly believe that my son is destined to be a good man with an amazing future.  It is true that he is very different to many other kids, but it is also true that he has been gifted with an enormous collection of talents that puts most of us to shame.  Why else would he be given so many beautiful things if it were not because he has an incredible journey ahead in his life?  Why else would he be given two good parents that love him so much that they are always ready to charge into his life when he needs us?  I choose to believe that the reason is because God has an amazing plan for him, and everything he and I have had to endure is part of that plan.  I once stood there in total darkness in the past, not  understanding why this journey had to be so hard and many times even cruel.  I reached out and found very little help in the so called professionals and experts, none of them had a single dry branch to light up a fire inside of my then dark soul.  It was not until I saw that dim light at the other side of my journey that I realized that God was there for me to show me a way out.  Today, after so much that has happened I can honestly say that the most important lesson I have learned during the last 12 months is when to bend my knees in humility to thank my God for my beautiful children, just the way they are!

Dad