I have been praying for a way to express the turmoil I feel surrounding my step situation, and then came on here, and remembered there were blogs available. Thank you, LORD!

I like the idea of a blog because I won't have to ask people about every question, but I can simply write and if someone feels like responding, they may do so. I will be writing primarily to vent, and to sort out my swirling feelings. Okay, here I go with my first entry ....

Well, my stepson is gone to his Mom's house for the weekend, and I feel exhausted from this week. He argued about everything I said this week, it felt like, and now I kinda know how my poor mother must have felt when I was fifteen! He has gotten into the habit of saying derogatory things about his father while I am alone with him, and I told straight up that he needs to just talk to his Dad. Sometimes I try to defend his Dad, but I don't want to do that anymore, because it just seems to prolong the strife. Instead, I just want to dismiss it, and tell him to say it directly to DH.

He was super-mad at his Dad this week for "yelling" at him to go to school. He was dawdling, and so I called his Dad at work. His Dad "yelled" at him to go to school, and then he acted like his Dad had royally abused him. First of all, he refused to talk to his Dad (because he was so scared of being yelled at, he claimed) and would only talk to him when I put it on speakerphone. Poor DH is sitting at work, busy as heck, and of course he was frustrated by this time. He just spoke firmly to him, but SS acts like that is not allowed.

SS (15-lives with us), until this week, has made a habit of being consistently 15-30 minutes late for school. This is after he is already given the special accomodation of coming to school one hour after the other students in the school. He has also skipped a few times, and is always trying to get out of going whenever he can.

Well, after that day, in which he did actually go on time, we agreed to let him take on the responsibility of getting there on time. I told him I was frustrated, too, at always nagging him, and would like him to be more grown up, and take this on for himself. For the next two days, he did go on time.... without me waking him up. Yay! But ... sure enough, we got the call last night that he had skipped Period Three, his gym class.

This is so exhausting!!! He doesn't want to take direction. He is just so hard to handle, and sometimes I feel like I can't keep going. Sometimes I just long for my life back ... it feels like it's been completely hijacked by an extremely ungrateful, rude and disrespectful fifteen-year-old.

Do I love him? Definitely, I do. And he loves me. We have been blessed to get to that point. But do I feel like I can take much more of him? Not right now. I need to find the strength to keep going ... O LORD ....