Our Boy and His Cricket

Over the years I have watched my sons baby skin begin to change and start to resemble a face I once stared at many a day and night.  Immediately I got him started on a treatment program and prayed that he would not be cursed with the same skin as me.  My prayers were not answered.   Now it's pretty darn clear that he inherited my lovely genes in that department instead of his dads perfect skin.  And he knows this as he's mentioned it many times.  My poor child is all I think to myself somedays.  Then somedays I also want to knock him upside the head when he says he "forgot" to wash his face for the last two days or that it's just too much work to deal with it.  Unfortunately it's going to be a lifetime of work to deal with.

In the beginning his ever growing zit population didn't seem to bother him much.  I hounded him to keep at it.  I also kept quiet about it until he asked what the problem was.  All the while knowing what would soon be happening because once the hormones go into full on attack mode so do the comments from others.  That hasn't changed in the twenty years since I was a zit faced high schooler and unfortunately I doubt it ever will...mean people just continue to grow and breed.   It's facing those bullies that's hard and even harder to help your child understand why and how to deal with them.  So yes, the awful comments have started and all I want to do is protect my baby and wipe away the emotional scars that will soon begin to root their way into his soul.  Right now he's mad and has every right to be.  He wants an instant cure.  He just wants any mark on his face to disappear and never return.  

He didn't ask for this, no one does.  All I can do for him is support his emotions and his being and continue to reassure him that he is in fact beautiful and handsome and smart and drop dead gorgeous!   And at the same time I have to deal with my own memories of the voices who once said my face was a mountain range or looked like sandpaper and deal with the guilt that I have passed this on to my own child.  No one ever said parenting was a piece of cake but it's so easy to forget that what our children deal with can make parenting look painless.  It's all in how we deal with their pain that will help them to understand just how amazingly beautiful they are inside and most importantly on the outside.

So I leave this post with a picture of the two of us from China when the hormonal change was beginning to take over.  Before I was asked to "remove all facial yuck from my face" in any picture I posted here.  This is just us.  Untouched.  Just us in all our God given beauty!  And I know someday my son will too see the amazing being God created in him and that what we deal with today will make us better people for tomorrow.