Will You Let Me Fall?

A person's decisions are his own and no one else's. That person may or may not listen to advice.

A hard-headed person who thinks his/her way is the only way will not listen to your way, even though you may be positive your way is best for them. This is especially true in some parent/teenage and young adult relationships.

A parent can cajole, beg, pray, and scream, but some children will not listen. And we cannot keep them from falling into error.

But it is said that experience is the best teacher, so sometimes falling is what they may need to do.

Of course, it is painful for parents who did not envision such a fall for their child. They did not envision his/her making so many mistakes, and so they cry and pray for their child to return to them, pray that the young person finds life away from home is not as wonderfully free as he or she thought.

But when this happens, ours must never be a door of no return. When our loved one returns, as often happens, we parents must show our love by opening our arms to receive them in love.

The struggle of someone who's gone astray--child or adult--is difficult to go through, even if it is of his/her own making. Hopefully, he will come to a point, maybe the lowest he's ever had in his life, that will cause him to take a good look at who he has become. But the decision to change will be his alone.

This is why anyone's struggle (no matter what kind of struggle it is) is not always a bad thing. Even if we are on bottom, we have the God-given ability to choose to climb up. And when we make that hard and courageous choice to climb, we are doing it with God's gift to us--our free will.