"NO BOYS ALLOWED!"

After reading my sweet daughter's latest post (See her blog here: Tired of "the Game?" ), I couldn't resist from going back through my old files and finding a copy of a letter I once wrote to a friend of mine (on February 8, 2004) about her (my daughter’s) new season in life......(Woe, 6 years ago!). After reading it again, I couldn't resist from copying and pasting and posting it here. It's old, but perhaps someone else can relate to what I could.

Dear Rhonda,

I LIKE the sign that you suggested to me for my daughter:

But, as I said in my earlier email, I fear that I have just entered a door, stepping into a new season of life that I KNOW I’m not ready for. And I don’t think I like it!!!!!

Mr. X …… the one who came knocking tonight … and I let him IN!!! … to my utter amazement: I let him in!!!!!!!... he is the very same one who dug deep into my daughter’s heart and opened the gush of waters from the depths of the soul within her, causing her to sob buckets of gut-wrenching tears earlier this very week.

Why?

How?

Basically because he “broke up with her.”

I watched my daughter bawling horribly. Mostly though, I have just listened to the horrid pain of her heart that was too horrible to contain inside her. With the gushing from within her, I thought: I’ve entered a new season … and I don’t think I like it! A season that lasts a long time. And a season that brings many torrents of rains with it. For very seldom does this season bring only “showers.” What it usually brings with it is more termed as “thunderstorms,” and dark, dark, dark lonely nights with overwhelmingly sadness-filled hours.

Lucky for Mr. X On the very same day this week when he did that to her they got back together. He mended his ways! I told Prissy later, “The one who cause the storm also brought the rainbow. Lucky for Him!” … Because this mom HATED watching the storm, and hated not being able to prevent it! And HATED knowing that there are MANY more “Mr. X” out there. They're just wearing different names and different faces, different sizes from different places … but all wearing the same gloves … Using my daughter’s heart as a punching bag to pound and bruise and break along the way.

I stood alone in my room as I listened to Prissy sob and understood a little more of God. I talked to Him about it. I can love her with all of my heart, but I can’t touch her pain in the midst of it ………………………… because she guards it and recoils, and holds it, and nurses it, and rocks it, and stews in it, and basks in it, and watches it over and over in her mind as her own video in which she plays the leading role, rewinding the scene of the pain of it over and over and over again and making it hurt, and won’t let it go ….. until ONLY SHE is ready!

I can know that she’ll be okay, but she won’t understand it, or believe it – if I tell her so. It’s a journey that she alone must take ... we all do, a season that comes whether we’re ready for it or not …… as if it says to us while jumping at us with a spook: “Peek a Boo! Ready or not, here I come!” It runs in for the kill and begins its battering! Ugh! Rhonda! This time, this season is messing with MY child! And did I say, I really don’t like it!

Rhonda, she’s only 13 and TALLER than her mother already!!!!!!!!!! She’s beautiful! With the prettiest smile. And laughter that one would melt for! She has a beautiful laugh!!!!!! Such a beautiful smile!!!! A smile that covers her whole face!!!!!!! And lights up her eyes. Oh! How I love her laugh! And now, the season’s come that tries to rob that from her! That tries to beat it out of her! That puts forth all of its efforts to kill, and steal, and destroy her in it! How can I tell her big enough for her to hear to, “Baby, Guard that with all that’s in you!!! … and don’t let any person take that from you!!!”

Ah, she’s fine. I’m fine. We both survived it! We got over it quick enough, though the night seemed longer than it was. Then, two days later, Mr. X breaks up with her again. Well, not really, that’s not the way it happened. This time, she was more ready for it, and had learned to read the signs ahead of time, and saw it coming … so she (like we all learn) beat him to the punch and said, “Let’s just be friends,” to save her face, and her dignity … and this time, she DISGUISED her pain and HID it! It’s a cycle, no doubt, that she will get better and better at … she’ll paint the face, she’ll mask the pain, she’ll fake the feeling, and she’ll cover and conceal it with all of her might … because we know of no other way to handle the pain of it! I hate that we’ve begun our season!

Okay, so let me tell you a little of Mr. X. He really does not have a lot to do with my feelings that I’ve written above. He’s just representing the icon of the season that I’m talking about. Prissy and Mr. X have been what they call: “going out” for almost a month! To her it seems a lifetime! Why in the world they call it “going out” when they don’t “go” anywhere. I have no idea. But that’s the new generation’s naming of it. They talk some, but not much, he doesn’t go to the same school. He wanted to come over with a couple of his friends four weeks ago (as they scouted the neighborhood on their Mule), but I was going out-of-town, and I was caught TOTALLY UNPREPARED for even the idea of it!!!!!!!! A boy wants to come over to see my daughter?????????? What? And WhY? And I don’t think so!!!!!!!!!! So, I ran them off with only the thought of it in their heads! I told them, “No!” And they didn’t come near my door!

After their breakup TWICE this week he shows up at the ballgame she’s attending. WHY? I just wonder and want to know: Why? What for? For what purpose? What’s its meaning? Didn’t we just breakup? … and finito the relationship (IF you can call it that … but after typing that word I’ve decided that I DON’T like that word!). And then today, he POPS (“Ready or not, here I come!”) up at my door!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Again, I wonder, “Why?” And I think and notice that: THIS time he doesn’t ask first before he comes!!!! He just pops up, and slinkers around the possible “NO!” that he might have gotten, had he bothered to present the question!

I suppose that all is well, and it's okay … but I thought, too, that he brought with him as he knocked at my door, another season that I’m not ready for: Boys! - invading my world! And at my daughter’s expense! HOW MUCH will it cost her???? HOW MUCH will it cost her??????? How can I not think of the song:

“Somebody’s knocking, should I let him in?

Lord, it’s the devil, would You look at him ……

I never dreamed, he’d have blue eyes and blue jeans….”

These thoughts keep rolling around in my mind as I am writing this to you:

I looked into Season’s face today … or at least one of them … one of the many faces he wears.

I wanted to shut the door.

I wanted to slam the door in his face,

and run,

and not let him in …

But I’d done that 4 weeks ago …

and like the ground hog comes out of his hole,

and comes out and sees his shadow … or doesn’t … whichever it is (?)

His shadow was seen … (or wasn’t) … and I prevented Season from coming for an almost six weeks …

yet, really, only four.

Season came knocking at my door again today … and this time

I could not prevent him from coming in,

though I wanted so desperately to!

BUT!

Season was set in time from the very beginning,

I just am not ready for his coming …

but ready or not ………

…… like it or don’t,

Season’s come!

I didn’t expect him …

I think and wonder, “Why?”

I was warned, it was predicted, I’ve lived through the season …

this same season’s come and gone for years … since time began …

“Why?” would not expect him? …

Self denial, I suppose, denying the inevitable …

Season’s here …

and I can’t make him go!

… what will Season do to my daughter?

Later this is what I felt God said to me so loud in my heart that night after I had penned that and gone to bed:

“Sharon, yes, season is here. The storm has come. Your daughter has just entered the season in which the floods will come, the winds will blow, and the wind will beat upon that house that encases your daughter’s soul and spirit … but she can and she will weather the storm if her house is built upon Me. Oh yes, Satan will try to huff and puff and blow her house down, he will beat upon that house with gruesome and cruel blows … but My houses are stronger that Satan’s blows.” I was flabbergasted at the picture that He showed me!

The rhyme: This is the House that Jack Built stopped me in my tracks not so long ago as the thought of it entered my mind: “This is the house that Jack built…” Remember the rhyme? It’s been all over my thoughts lately, because I realized that I’ve been building little houses day after day after day, brick after brick after brick, for as many years now as my child is old. Yes, I know that we each, even they, when they stand before God at Judgment will answer for themselves … but no matter how you want to word it … I’ve been helping in the building of these houses for years.

The time of testing has come to see what kind of house that this one is made of … and I can’t put my house in front of hers to weather the winds of the storms that blow toward her. Oh!, that she could hear the sounds of the winds as it blows and recognize the disguises he wears, and the bait he puts before her as just that: bait! Oh!, that she would recognize Satan’s deceit! And that when the wind is stilled - her house still stands!

Ah... as I said earlier, it's been several years since I wrote that. Meet Prissy... though this is a more recent picture it's still an old one, it's not a picture of when I first wrote this: