Caring Heart: Backsliding

I hope none of you are in the middle of this, but if you are I hope this helps.

Backsliding

Oh God, how can it be that whenever I just am beginning to feel like things are getter better and maybe, just maybe I am making headway with him, he just turns around and goes back to the old ways?  I have worked so hard, prayed so often, given so much.  Shouldn't it show results?  Shouldn't they last longer? Why can't what I am doing be enough to help him change?
Give me the energy to reach down and find somewhere within me another scrap of patience to hold onto, to work some more, pray some more, and give some more.  Help him to change.  Help me lead him to desire to change. Help me give him the tools that will enable him to change.   Help me enable him to see the differences, to feel the pride.  Through your will and your strength. And, despite the backsliding that brings such waves of discouragement, help me remember to celebrate the times that he DOES succeed, that he DOES change, DOES try... however short, to celebrate and honor those times.

Excerpted from "The Caring Heart Speaks: Meditations for foster, kinship, and adoptive parents" by Gail Underwood Parker   Artwork by Anna Parker David from the book cover.