Life surely takes strange turns. Growing up, I had a few events that took me by surprise. I kind of freaked out a couple times when relationships grew more intense than I expected. I got myself fired once for letting the air out of a fellow employee's tire as a prank (done to 'impress' .. right... a girl), etc.

Since then, I've several times found myself in serious trouble because of bad decisions. And each time, life seemed really black as I searched for solutions or at least some sort of action to take in response to the troubles I had caused myself.

More recently though, I began going through various crisis events the cause of which are actions taken by my children.

These are a different kind of panic, one which is even worse in some ways, in that they have to be the one to ultimately take responsibility over.

There have been the poor choices of relationships, resulting in brushes with the law. There have been experimentations
with substances of which I don't approve. There has been poor study habits, resulting in inability to get into college or slow down the career advancements.

Now we are in the midst of another one of these crisis points. It's too personal, and I don't feel comfortable talking about it second hand. But it is painful to see my children be hurt and to hurt themselves. And it makes me feel the pain of doing an inadequate job preparing them for adulthood.