Secrets

The differences between boys and girls never cease to amaze me. When you tell the boys a secret, they MIGHT wait until they are out of your sight before they tell one of their siblings. At Christmas they have been known to say something like "I am not going to tell you that you are getting......for Christmas." Yes, we have stopped Christmas shopping for others with them!

Of course, none of these are serious secrets. Usually it is just goofiness. Like, yesterday Mady asked if she could go out for lunch. I said no but told her we probably would tomorrow because we had errands to run all morning. She began planning tomorrow's lunch. Last night, she came in to talk about it and I told her it was a secret and we couldn't talk about it around her brothers. Basically, I just didn't want to hear how unfair life was because Mady was going to out to eat and they had to go to school. Mady got a big smile and put her finger over her mouth.

Her brothers would have immediately gone to their bedrooms and spread the word. Any time Mady needs to talk about her secret, she comes to me, pulls me down to her level and whispers in my ear "Don't forget - Chili's or Raising Canes!" Then she puts her finger back over her huge smile and says "SHHHH!"

Today I love it. But, as she grows older I can only hope that I am still the one she wants to tell her secrets to. I don't want to be her best friend. First and foremost I am her mother. I will make her mad. I will make her life unfair and miserable and all of those other irritating things that parents "do" to their children. I will do it with the utmost love and always with her best interest at heart. If, in the midst of doing my best to parent her, she decides that I am still who she wants to share her secrets with then I am one blessed Momma! If she decides that she wants to share her secrets with someone else, well I am STILL one blessed Momma. And this blessed Momma will be praying hard that she has a great friend that will know when to keep her secrets tucked tight in her heart and when to take her secrets to the proper person if it is necessary for her safety or well-being.

Us going to lunch doesn't need national security. But that does not matter. I want her to learn that trust is a very important thing in a relationship. Any relationship. If someone tells her something and says it is a secret, no matter how trivial it seems to her, for whatever reason, her friend does not want the information shared with anyone else and she should respect that. It might be a test or it might be that that friend knows the whole story and Mady doesn't. There will be times when a girl-friend will break her heart and her trust, but I hope through all the pain that will come from that she learns that you have to choose your friends carefully and the importance of NOT doing the same thing to someone else.

As much as I hope and pray that Mady (and all of the kids) have a great friend like that in her life, most importantly I hope Mady learns to BE that kind of friend.