I’ve been struggling lately, with the simple fact that I cannot get a minute of time to myself. I can’t even do a load of laundry without everyone losing the plot two seconds after I dare to go downstairs. Everyone can be playing nicely together and the second I disappear, they sense I am gone and stand at the top of the stairs screaming for me. I never understood why mothers complained about not being able to use the bathroom alone, but alas, I now do. I open the door to tiny faces staring at me with tears, like I just left the country for sixty years. But alas.
The struggle is real. And lately, I will admit, I have not been finding joy, in being a mother. Don’t get me wrong, I love my boys to the ends of the world. I would do anything for them and would not trade being their mama for ANYTHING. But the joy that is supposed to be found while being a mom? Yea. Hasn’t been happening. I’ve been grumpy. Short. Snappy. Struggling. I go to bed praying, begging for forgiveness.
The other day I decided that instead of trying to reroute my entire life course, and beat myself up over failure, I was going to start small. I was going to try one day at a time. Instead of trying to enjoy being a mother for all eternity I was going to try and enjoy it; today. I’ll let you know how that works out. Because that isn’t my point. My point was found in my oh so timely fashioned devotional this morning.
It read “By God’s grace I can resist the temptation to treat my children as interruptions to my will for my life. Instead, God enables me to treat my children as precious gifts he is using to shape me into his image according to his will for my life.” -Treasuring Christ when your hands are full, Gloria Furman. The whole point of the devotion, this morning, was to have an eternal perspective instead of getting caught up in the “I have to do laundry and diapers again” moments. Looking at motherhood through the eternal perspective instead of the minutely one. You know, the one I have been getting hung up on?
Oofda. Or as my two year old says over the monitor when he is supposed to be napping “Oofda tacos.”
My children are precious gifts. Indeed. Indeed they are. The most precious. The fact that I treat them as interruptions to MY life, instead of viewing them as the precious treasures they are, hit hard. Ironically as I read that, I was just arguing “Can’t I even get ten minutes in the morning to do my DEVOTIONAL! What is more holy than a devotional! I’m wanting to start my day with you, Lord, can’t I have that?” I put the book down and sat with that for a minute.
I have always prayed for and looked deep for God’s will in my life, struggling with knowing if what I am doing is His will. And oof.
My boys are my life right now. They are God’s will FOR my life right now. My WHOLE purpose right now is wrapped up in raising these boys to be Godly men. And right now, they are watching and soaking in everything I do and say and how I act and I have been anything but a Godly example.
So once again, I come on bended knee. Asking for protection of their hearts and minds and souls. I pray for guidance for myself and my husband as we raise these two precious little gifts from above. I pray that I would stop viewing them as distractions but rather purpose. And instead of wishing for ten minutes alone, praise God for ten more minutes with them.
I’m not arguing that alone time is wrong, I’m just saying that my perspective was altered this morning and today I am choosing joy.
Tangled Thoughts 