Labels:
His Words,
Training Up,
Waiting (aka Adoption)
Children drain you. She has this great analogy:
“I have felt for a long time
that when you have little children, they have a straw that taps directly into
your energy. The milkshake cup is me, and the milkshake is my energy, and every
child is armed with a straw”.
She says that when the glass is full, things go pretty
well. But once they hit the last inch of milkshake, things get
ugly. The kids start getting panicky and so does mom. She writes:
“the demands for attention
and energy get suddenly loud and obnoxious, when in reality they aren’t
demanding anything different than what they were made to need”.
I’ve often felt myself getting impatient with my son for basically
no other reason than him needing me (for the millionth time that day). It
usually comes at night, when I’m trudging through the nighttime ritual.
And I really hate that feeling, I actually mentally yell at myself for being
that way, but it usually doesn’t change my impatient response. So what’s
the answer?
She says the first thing is to realize that it’s supposed to be
like this. Mothering isn’t easy. She writes:
"We have this mental ideal
of what your days as a mother are supposed to be like. We think that if we were
doing it right, then it wouldn’t be this hard. Of course there are a lot of
ways to improve what we do, that make things easier. But it is like improving
the form of a runner. They still have to run in order to use it. It still won’t
be easy.”
So stop beating myself up for being tired and not bounding
through the day and night. Having a better schedule or ritual isn’t going
to magically make everything wonderful. I find myself getting stuck on
trying to find the perfect routine. But there’s just not one. Not
when you have a small child. I need to be okay with that, which is
difficult for a control freak like me.
We also have to recognize that this life of mothering is our
sanctification. She writes:
“I was recently talking to
my husband about this whole problem. Why is there almost always a time in the
day when I feel like my head may explode, or fall off, or something equally
dramatic? He pointed out that the apostle Paul addressed this very issue when
he said ” therefore, since the race is so easy, and we aren’t having any
trouble as we try to finish it….” Totally cracked me up. And it is true.”
I guess I always think of sanctification as something I need to
work on once I get finished with all the tidying up and feeding and bathing and
dishes and working, etc. It’s so hard to think that the tidying and
feeding and bathing and working IS my sanctification. It is what God is
using to transform my personality and character into that of Christ’s.
She says that it is our job to cast off sins and to be faithful,
and it is Christ’s job to renew us. That “we can trust him to fill our
milkshakes, because His never runs low”.
I’ve read this Hebrews passage many times, and heard it preached
even more times. But just today I saw a word I never knew was in there –
patience.
12:1-2 “Wherefore
seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us
lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us
run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto
Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before
him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand
of the throne of God.”
We've been praying that God
will prepare our hearts for the next phase of our life - growing our family.
And I think He is.
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