humbling

Delight in your children.  That is the answer, for the Christian parent.

I read a post the other day exhorting me in this matter.

I love my children with an indescribable depth.  It's so deep it hurts.

And yet.

Tonight, I flew solo.  Daddy left for work at 4:00 p.m. rather than 9:00 p.m., which is a huge difference in terms of my sanity.  It's not bad when we know ahead of time; we plan for it--completing showers and baths early and prepping the main dish early, leaving me with minimal cooking followed by teethbrushing, storytime and prayer.

This being a last minute change, we did nothing ahead of time.  In addition, I left for a hair perm appt. late morning, which kept me away three hours.  I arrived home to find messy rooms, a cluttered dining-room table, and a dish-and-crumb-cluttered kitchen.  The laundry had gone no where, and the boys hadn't done their reading.  My nerves rattled within ten minutes of accessing the situation.

It never pays to leave the house, people.  The more kids you have, the more you need stay home.  This isn't a negative, necessarily.

What's more, all the children missed me and wanted my attention--especially the girls.  I'm rarely ever gone more than ninety minutes (grocery runs), so three hours felt like an eternity to all of us.  I missed them as well.

But because the afternoon and evening turned into a herculean challenge, I failed to delight in them.  The baby and three year old were both whiny, which always sends me into fits of guilt and stress.  Baby cries are a sound I find intolerable, possibly because I'm a nursing mom.  Baby cries, offer the breast.  It's a knee-jerk reaction, but when they get older and desire the breast less, you have to find new tricks.  And when you're cooking, it's nearly impossible to entertain an active baby.  Go ahead and run your fingernails across a chalkboard.  That's how it feels to me to hear a baby crying, and be powerless to act immediately.

My eight year old wanted to help with the Italian-sausage spaghetti sauce and pasta shells.  While I did let him, I was only pleasant in spurts.  His chatty presence made me more nervous, as it blended with the whiny sounds coming from the playroom, where I had gated up the girls.  I've tried many times to cook with them on the loose, but keeping them out of trouble while attending to meal prep consistently ends in futility, without Daddy around to run interference.  The boys try to keep their sisters entertained, but their help isn't what you'd call mature help.  Just yet.

My intense frustration is this.  There's nothing I want more than to succeed at loving my children.  I try hard.  Much energy is expended in looking for solutions and answers to the various challenges.  I want them to grow up, look back, and feel that I delighted in them and pointed them to Jesus.   That's all I want from this life.  That one thing.  Everything else would be a bonus.

I really agree that delighting in them is the key.

Then why, oh why, do I find it so hard sometimes?  Why do I get so nervous so easily?  What a horrible trait!

I read this post after they all went to bed.  It's a message I hear from God on a regular basis.  Essentially, it's this:

You don't have to try.  I already did the work.  Stop your treadmill-style effort, and delight in ME!  I am your answer.

In the last year, I've come to realize that my insane trying is actually sin.  Working out my salvation is sin.  What's behind it, really?

Dare I say it?  I'm ashamed--but here goes.

I think we try so hard because we want the credit.  We don't really want the glory to go to God.

But as Sandi said in her beautiful post, it isn't supposed to be about us.  It must be about him, and his glory, always.

My weakness isn't about me and where I fall short.

It's about Him and all His glory.

His surpassing great power is shown through my inability to do it on my own.

I need Him on every level and that is good for me and pleasing to Him.

Why do I fight it so? This stubborn nature of mine, thinking I need to have it together. It is the lie of this age...To do it all, well, and all the time.

Our limits are our friends not the enemy.

They escort us to the One who has no lack.

above excerpt from: A Mother's Musings (Morning Meditation)

Tomorrow morning during devotions, I will explain the futility of our efforts to the boys.  It's not enough to just apologize to them for snappy behavior.  They need to know why I continue to struggle with nervousness and impatience, and why they continue to struggle with their own faults.  They might not comprehend all of it, but I can gauge where they're at in their understanding of grace, by starting the conversation.