Gift: Hidden Gifts

By +Jeanne Takenaka @JeanneTakenaka

My Five Minute Friday prompt this week is—GIFT. This largely unedited “rough draft” form of writing stretches this perfectionist, in the best of ways. I write for five minutes on a given topic. If you’re interested in learning more about 5-Minute Fridays, check out our hostess, Kate Motaung’s site. Or, click on the link at the bottom of this post. As you read my simpler Friday posts, I hope you’ll join in the conversation!

GIFT

I’m not gonna lie. It’s been a hard, hard week in the Takenaka household. Hubby had to be away for six weeks for work, and then go away again.

One boy is struggling with stuff that we can’t even put a name to. The other is trying to wrap his head around what his first year of junior high will look like.

For the boy trying to figure out where he fits in God’s plan and in this world, it’s been an emotional tight rope walk. Moods shifting minute to minute, toppling him and me. As he tries to figure out what it means to be adopted, he’s struggling with his identity and who he is.

I’m a worn out mama tonight. And if I’d seen the prompt thirty minutes before I did, I would have laughed in God’s face at the irony of it. This week has not felt like a gift. It’s felt more like a trial by word-daggers and struggle with my ability to mother these two precious, amazing boys.

But I realized something tonight. As I sat with Peter, our oldest, and he asked questions and really listened to the answers I shared. He sought my thoughts. I understood anew that this motherhood journey? It’s a huge gift.

Not just the cuddle-bug, happy memory moments, but the battles of the will, the walking alongside each other through life’s hard.

There is a gift for a child in knowing his mama loves him, even when he’s been ugly to her. There’s a gift for me in knowing that God uses me to speak love into a hurting heart. To share a bit of wisdom to a quickly growing-up boy. And have it be received.

So this week, though it’s been one tough struggle? I am proclaiming it a gift. The struggles won’t end tonight. In some ways they’re just beginning.

But God has given me the gift of walking with these two boys—who drain me dry some days—through the struggles, through the joys that will be theirs.

May I hold each day—struggle or easy—as the gift God intended it to be.

What about you? What struggle have you faced that you can now call a gift? What is the best gift you ever received?

Check out Kate Motaung’s Five Minute Friday post—Gift