Learning Mama

“The preparations of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord… Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.” ~ Proverbs 16:1,3

Parenting. What a sterile word. Being a parent. Sounds so… vocational, like a duty or a task. But parenting is so much more. It is so much more than joining with another person to create a brand new life; so much more than bringing that little life into the world; so much more than clothing, feeding, and changing diapers for the new life; so much more. So much more than just teaching a growing child how to read, which color is red or blue or pink; so much more than teaching them how to do chores – “… pick up your toys,” “… here is how you fold a washcloth,” “…for supper we need five plates plus one more for our guest. That makes how many?”

Parenting. It is so much more. So much more than I am able to do… yet it is exactly what I get to do each and every day. What I GET to do, what I am PRIVILEDGED to do. What I struggle to do.

Being a parent is a high honor – I’ve been entrusted with wee little lives that are just beginning to unfurl before my eyes. New personalities are budding and blossoming beneath my fingertips. I have the power to allow little dreams to soar to heights unknown… and I have the power to snuff out childish fancies like a cold quick gust extinguishes a flickering flame (en ninguna manera! – don’t let it happen!)

Today, my heart cry has been, “God! Give me the key to their hearts! Show me how to unlock them so they can soar!” I want to know how to answer their questions they are asking… and the ones they don’t know how to ask. I want to know what to say when they come to me with a problem… even one as ‘trivial’ as “Liam is sitting on the blanket I am trying to fold.” A sharp, “Liam! Get off the blanket!” sure gets the job done… but it doesn’t unlock hearts, it doesn’t produce kindness, it doesn’t produce gentleness. What about the really tough situations: “Mama, there are a lot of dead people in Haiti, right?” “Yes, love.” “God can bring them back to life, right?” How do you answer that one?!

And then, there are the all to frequent times in my life when I see myself getting frustrated. The frustration is understandable, I guess. I hope. But what am I going to do with my frustration? Am I going to yell? Am I going to lash out? Am I going to grouchily demand silence? How am I going to act? What am I going to show my kids about how to deal with frustration?

Today, as I was helping Abigail with her piano lesson, while Phin and Liam were running around being very GOOD but loud little boys, I was getting frustrated. I wanted to raise my voice to Abbi, demanding that she GET what I was trying to show her, demanding that she LISTEN to ALL of what I say so she can understand. I wanted to holler at the boys to… to what? Stop being boys? But, for once I saw myself take a deep breath, put on a smile, and tell Abbi she was doing well. I saw myself calmly redirecting the boys’ energy to something profitable… but, I was still frustrated.

I almost came down hard on myself, really hard. “What! Can’t you be NICE?!” Wait. I was nice. Abbi was still happy, the boys were still happy and even though I had wanted to do and say the wrong things, I hadn’t. That was when the above verses popped into my head: “Commit your works unto the Lord and your thoughts will be established.” BING! So, maybe, just maybe, if I DO the right thing in spite of how I am feeling, maybe, over time, those feelings of frustration, irritability, whatever will fade away (is that self-control?) “The preparations of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” So, if I focus on preparing my heart to give all that I’ve got to my kids, maybe the answers they are seeking will come to me from the Lord at just the right time and then flow out of me? Wow. That would be cool.

So, yeah. I’ve gone to bed almost every night for the past five years hoping to wake up in the morning as the perfect mother. I’ve been frustrated, almost daily, with my shortcomings, my mistakes, my regularly visited pitfalls. I’ve always known that this process of changing doesn’t happen overnight. But it seems that for a long while I’ve been trying to get my emotions to change before my actions; it hasn’t worked. I think now I’m going to focus on preparing my heart in prayer and watching that I DO the right things in spite of how I feel. In about 5 years or so, ask me how it worked!