Do you have to breathe this way?

"Do you have to breathe this way!?" is something a growing-up daughter (not mine) said to her mother. -- How annoying can a mother be!

The mother in question, whom I met for the first time on Friday, could never quite forget this phrase, as it epitomized the nonsensical differences mothers and daughters can have when the time comes. She can laugh about it, as her daughter is now 28, independent, and confides in her all the time.

I find it a humiliating/humbling time. All the sudden you can do nothing right, but everything wrong. Actually, it seems everything you have done for them in the past was wrong, too, now in retrospect. Eye-rolling, ridiculing becomes your daily nurturing.

To ask a favour, to express an opinion, to expect something done is over the top. The simplest request becomes a dictatorial edict that cannot be tolerated. Your society is not solicited. -- Your breathing is barely acceptable. We are hopeless causes. We barely have a right to exist and be ourselves. They think we think the same thing about them.

They are busy becoming their own independent persons, trying to be different from us, trying to get out from under us, craving "freedom", finding their own world. They are a locomotive on a track, not to be moved from their own path and agenda by us.

I pray for them every day.

Below is a prayer I copied from Pastor Weedon’s blog. It is quite formal, but it can guide us in praying:

O God, our heavenly Father, You love mankind, and are most merciful and compassionate, have mercy upon all the members of my family/church/ circle of friends/ office (and especially...), for whom I humbly pray You, and commend them to Your gracious protection. Be, O God, their guide and guardian in all their endeavors; lead them in the path of Your truth, and draw them near to You, that they may lead a godly and righteous life in Your love and fear; doing Your will in all matters. Give them grace that they may be temperate, industrious, diligent, devout and charitable. Defend them against the assaults of the enemy, and grant them wisdom and strength to resist all temptation and corruption of this life; and direct them in the way of salvation, for the merits of Your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.