THANK GOD I LEFT MY KIDS
By Mabel Katz

The first thing I did when I decided to accept the invitation to write this chapter was to check if it was spiritually correct. The second thing was to get approval from my kids. This is a somewhat delicate subject, and I didn't want to hurt their feelings. As it turned out, my oldest son, Jonathan, now 24 years old, responded, "Mom, if this is going to help you be more out there and create more opportunities to share your message with people, go ahead. I'm okay with it." Lyonel, who is 19 years old, said, "Mom, it's sad. But go ahead. I'm okay."

I believe this is a great opportunity to share how sometimes things that we may consider "wrong", "incorrect", or "bad" can be right for us and our loved ones, but we don't know it until after the fact.

When I separated from my husband, back in 1998, he told me he wanted to stay in the house with the kids. I didn't personally know nor had every heard of any woman who had done such a thing. Usually, the mother stays with the kids in the house and the husband is the one that leaves. When my husband told me about his plan, I was outraged and extremely upset. How could he propose such a thing? I had been so good to him. I am an accountant by profession, and had always helped him financially and supported him so that he could do and be whatever he chose. 

Fortunately at the time I was already practicing Ho'oponopono, which I now teach. This is a very ancient Hawaiian art of problem solving that teaches us how to "clean" and "erase" old memories or programs which attract certain things that don't work for us to our lives. When we engage in this process of cleansing, we allow what is perfect and right to come to us at the perfect time. It is important to understand that we don't know what is perfect and right for us, or when the perfect moment is. The problem often is that we don't know that "we don't know". However, as soon as I started my "cleaning" and "erasing" (Ho'oponopono) the following thought came to me: "He is actually helping me. He doesn't know it consciously, but he's helping me. I needed to be by myself and be out there in order to do what I came to do."

At the time, this was a very novel and scary thought, but, because I was doing my "cleaning", 
I trusted and decided to let go, and let God.

Shortly thereafter, I realized it was the perfect thing for everybody. My kids got closer. They became good friends and cared for each other, something they had never done before. Before I left, they fought and put each other down constantly. Now, they became more responsible. They also got closer to their father and were a great source of company to him. As a matter of fact, they helped him through a transition that otherwise would have been really hard. In the end, my decision to leave worked for everybody. But did I know that at the time? 

When situations are present in our lives, it is very easy to see them as problems, tests, or punishments, instead of blessings and opportunities. The first thing we usually do is judge. We have opinions, and tend to think that we know what is right and what is wrong. Through my experience with my family and countless others, I have learned that GOD knows what is right for us, and, that if we get out of our own way, we tend to "miraculously" be in the right place at the right time.