Years ago, many years ago, when I was a fairly new driver I was driving down a street on a gorgeous fall day. There was a car coming the other way, and there was another parked on the same side of the street as the oncoming car. Ahead of me was a pile of leaves and I thought I would just drive through the pile so I would not have to wait for the car to pass.
At the last second I stopped my car just before the pile of leaves and let the car pass. As I drove around the leaves (that I was about to plow right through), four kids jumped out of the leaves laughing and throwing leaves at my car.
I drove a block, pulled over and got out of my car and threw up. I was seconds/inches away from killing those four kids.
Recently I read a story of a mom who felt horrible that on a given night, in a given moment of time, she felt she did everything wrong with her child’s diabetes; she failed. Of course she felt horrible about it but the truth is, outside of it being a long night, life went on.
The mistakes we, as parents, make in the lives of our children could be described as monumental. Add to this equation being a parent of a child with diabetes, it is no wonder that we all haven’t blown our own brains out a million times. There is no parent’s ultimate handbook that just answers everything we need to know.
We make mistakes. Sometimes we make colossal mistakes. But in my ‘almost’ disaster with my car, I continued to drive. I felt horrible. But I moved on.
We are always so forgiving of everyone else around us but we must reconcile that we always must remember there will come a time that we need to forgive ourselves for something we did for/to/about our child’s diabetes. It happens to all of us at one time or another. Today is just a reminder that it is okay to say THAT is a mistake I cannot do again, and move on. AND DO SO.
The car needs to be driven once again but cannot be done unless you get behind the wheel once again. I have the score at 421,367 things we have done correctly and 6 that we have not. Not such a bad record, don’t you agree? Forgive yourself and drive into the sunset……….until the next time. Ahhhhhh the world is always ready for a new day.
I am a diabetes dad.
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