The concept and practice of "tough love" goes against every maternal instinct I have. Tough love tears my heart out and beats it up, battering and bruising it to the point of becoming an emotional mess.
My definition of "tough love" is allowing a person whom you love with all your heart, body and soul to experience the consequences of their behavior. Tough love to me is when your 17 year old gets his wallet, phone and sunglasses stolen because of a poor choice on his part, I don't immediately replace all the lost or stolen items. Tough love is, "hey that sucks, but from now on you'll remember to keep up with your stuff better and not leave them unattended in the open at an amusement park." And life goes on, him without a wallet, a phone and sunglasses until he can afford to replace them.
The neurotic, perfectionist mother in me wants my child to be happy first and foremost. She wants to love, have warm fuzzy moments and nurture my children. This perfectionist mother knows that because I have told my children not to do something, then they intuitively know right from wrong just because Mommy-dearest said so, and my children will live in a buffered, hurt-free space because of the awesome superhero mother that I am. What a truckload of denial that is! Believe it or not, that is exactly where my perfectionist brain will try to go if I do not seek God's will through daily prayer and reading God's word.
Today I wish tough love was just my 17 year old not having a phone or wallet. I wish it was so simple. But today, tough love is much, much more difficult.
Today we had to make the difficult decision to not enable one of our children to continue to make poor choices - dangerous choices that lead to paths of despair, hopelessness and death. The decision we made as parents causes me to surrender the luxury of instant gratification. It is my hope that through our surrender that one day our child will see it as an action to save a life, even if it hurts some now.
I am writing this because I live a transparent life. Hopefully, a life without secrets, a life without delusion. My human nature wants to tell you that everything is just peachy. My superhero mother wants to tell you that I protect my children from everything and our life is only sunshine and rainbows. The true, imperfect person will honestly tell you that I am hurting today. My imperfect self will tell you that I am scared of this decision. But, today, I am stepping out on faith, relying on God to take care of this situation, to take care of my child, to take care of me.
Tough love reminds me that God loves my child more than I ever possibly could. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He can and will take care of him. My part is allowing God to take care of us, without interfering. Sometimes that is so hard, but I know that God's will and plan is much better than anything I can do, so my plan is to let God be the almighty, the all powerful God that He is.
