FTSF - Difficult Choices

Our FTSF prompt this week is "The hardest choice I ever made was..."

I do not spend a lot of time weighing options.  I do not hem and haw over what I should do.  I simply look at the situation, go through my choices, and quickly pick one.  For example, I spent less than 30 minutes total choosing the flooring, wood for the cupboards, and the countertop for my new kitchen.  This quick choice thing applies to everything, though.  We bought our house on the farm before we even listed our previous home with a realtor and after looking at exactly zero other houses.  Some people may say it is the "scott" in me, but I have no doubt my quick decision-making has everything to do with a choice I had to make when I was 16.

The hardest choice I ever made was when I was 16, and I had to decide with which parent I was going to live.

My parents divorced when I was in 2nd grade.  Things weren't smooth by any means, but my parents did their absolute best to make sure we knew we were loved.  We lived with my stay-at-home mom, but we lived only a few miles from Dad.  We saw him all the time.  He never missed a weekend or Wednesday night visit, and he came to track meets and swim meets and anything else we did. 

Both of my parents remarried, and life went along until the summer after my sophomore year of high school.  My stepdad worked for Ford, and the plant in Ohio had shut down.  He was out of work for a while, but eventually was transferred to the plant in Kentucky.  Six hours away from our home in Canton.

My parents did not tell the four of us (my siblings and me) what we were going to do and where we were going to live.  They left the decision up to us.  Each of my siblings and I independently decided where we wanted to live.

I am not going to go into why they had us choose.  I still don't know that answer myself.  All I know is how I felt, and I felt like I was having to choose between my parents.  Because I loved them equally, with all my heart, I had to take other factors into account.  I weighed the stepparent options.  Neither was ideal.  Really, neither was enjoyable.  I factored in the fact that my dad had two young kids with my stepmom.  I knew I'd be in for a whole mess of babysitting if I moved in with him.  I thought about my grandparents, who I spent hours and hours with each week.  I had started dating COW about 8 months earlier.  I had done extremely well in track my sophomore year, and with some changes being made in the state, I was on target to do extremely well my junior year.  I thought about the reality of moving to a new state two years before I was going to be on my own anyway.  So many thoughts consumed me for what seems like years, but was really only a couple of weeks.

In the end, I chose to stay in Ohio with my dad.

To this day, one of the hardest things I ever had to do was tell my mom of my decision.  I will never forget her reaction.  There were tears.  Lots and lots of tears.  I knew I had broken my mom's heart. 

Time marched on, as it is meant to do.  We all moved to our new homes, settled into our new reality. 

I have absolutely no bad feelings about the entire situation I was in back then (although sometimes I wished my parents would have just made the decision for us).  My mom had no option but to move, so I certainly can't fault her for it.  I missed her terribly at times, but it was only two years before I was off to college and living on my own.  As it turns out, I ended up going to college an hour and a half away from my mom and saw her more often during those years. 

I have never stressed over making a decision since that one very large, very emotional one.  The college to attend, the job to take, the city to live, the house to buy, the car to drive.  None of them took much thought at all.  None of them deserved the time and effort compared to that one decision from my teen years.

Yesterday, I read a post by Lillian about choosing a theme song for your life.  Really, it was more about how a theme song pretty much chooses you.  Here's one of the songs that chose me years ago:

Having trouble getting the video?  Go here.

Have a lovely day!

(This was going to be a FTSF and quick takes combo, but this FTSF took long enough.  I'll fit the takes into my post for the 10 Things of Thankful hop this weekend.)

Milestones

For years Husband and I have wanted to join the adult volleyball league at church.  We have a few friends who play, and it sounds like so much fun.  We've never been able to, though, because it would require us to hire sitters for an hour and a half every Saturday night.  It would have bankrupted us.  Plus, when we moved out here to the farm, the drive to get a sitter would have just been a pain.  Well, the time has come.  Our oldest is of babysitting age. 
I have never been more worried about my children as when we pulled out of the driveway, leaving the 12 year old in charge of his 5 siblings.  Granted, we had already put the two little ones down for the night.  We had made the expectations completely clear to the rest of the kids before we walked out the door.  They had all the phone numbers they could possibly need.  The doors were locked.  The dogs were on alert.  And yet, every horrible scenario went through my head in the 30 second trip down the drive.  I only let myself call home once, and when we got home, of course everything was fine.  They are good kids, and they were ready for this.  It doesn't mean I like my children growing up.

My job as a mom is to raise my children to be independent, confident, responsible, generous, and happy.  From the day the oldest was born, I have kept this in mind.  Regardless of the fact that I hate to see them grow independent of me, that is what God wants.  They are not mine to keep under my wing for their entire lives.  With each milestone, from taking first steps, heading off to school, or staying home alone, I have to encourage them and be excited with them, because they certainly are excited.  They are doing what they were born to do.  By helping them do this, so am I. 

By the way, we had a blast playing volleyball.  Their growing up does have some perks.




our six little darlings-one year ago