Then I found a message from Thomas.
“Leah, I know you’ll worry this is too much land. Don’t. You don’t need to manage everything. I already found people who can.”
Then came the sentence that broke me.
“Your job is to live.”
For years, my job had been everyone else.
Thomas’s illness.
Appointments.
Medication.
Insurance.
Helping him stand when he was weak.
Then after he died, I made Jared my job.
Meals.
Laundry.
Money.
Problems.
Rescuing.
Thomas knew me better than I knew myself.
There was another letter.
“Leah, you will be tempted to save Jared again. I know you. I love that about you. But love can become a hiding place for fear.”
I kept reading.
“You have spent your life making pain easier for everyone else. Please do not make adulthood optional for our son.”
My vision blurred.
“Let him carry something. Let him discover his own strength.”
Then:
“Stop proving you deserve a home. You already do.”
Jared sat on the porch steps and cried.
“Dad thought I was weak.”
“No,” I said. “He thought you were protected.”
“By you.”
“Yes.”
That was when I had to admit my own part in everything.
I had called rescuing Jared love.
Sometimes it was.
But sometimes it was fear.
I was afraid he would struggle, so I removed every struggle before it reached him.
And because I always saved him, he never learned that difficulties didn’t have to destroy him.
Jared looked at me.
“I still made bad choices.”
