The Record I Keep Replaying

My four year old desperately wants to be a photographer right now when he grows up. He takes hundreds of pictures a week with the camera he got for Christmas.  He also dabbles in videos. 

 It's all very cute and sweet except when we're in a hurry to get to the store and back before my youngest's last nap and dinner time.  After multiple requests for him to get his shoes on, I exasperatedly made a comment that he'd "better hurry up or we would leave without him."  It was a threat so idle and taken so lightly that my son actually filmed it and more short videos before we finally got out of our house.  

In addition to taking an astounding number of videos and pictures in marathons that would leave an adult professional photographer impressed, my son likes to endlessly admire his own work . . . sometimes by playing the same 20 second video repeatedly.  Guess which 20 second video he chose to play the most?

Now, I know it wasn't my best parenting moment, but it was far from my worst. Even my naturally anxious son was not fazed by my threat! Still, by the twentieth time I heard myself make that threat I was feeling tremendously guilty and praying for forgiveness.  I even started worrying that I had given my child some kind of abandonment complex or would by him listening to the same threat over and over.  I started worrying about what I would have done if Jesus had decided to return to visit me just as I was saying those words.  Would he have been repulsed?  Would he have refused to take me to heaven to meet his father? What would I have done?

But then I realized my son was giggling as he watched the video.  "You're funny, mama! You wouldn't leave me, ever!" My son got the joke.  Surely God and Jesus did, too.  The only one who was getting a complex was me and I was giving it to myself.

I realized then that taking a little mistake in the moment, making a record of it in my mind and then playing it over and over and over again is what I've done to myself my whole life.  While others (including God) see me as a whole with both good and bad, I have often constructed my self worth based on a collection of twenty second clips of my mistakes that I whisper to myself over and over again and blow out of proportion.  I torment myself by only holding on to the bad moments and not balancing them with the good. For a split second, I said the wrong thing, but for most of my son's life I had done the right thing.  My actions outweighed my words.  Lord, help me remember this lesson in the future!

Building Blocks

Today my eldest son's block towers got dismantled by his little brother before we could stop him. The act broke his heart and set him sobbing and distraught for twenty minutes until I finally got him calmed down. (Admittedly, I wasn't initially as compassionate as he needed me to be, but eventually I did realize my mistake and we found a solution of utilizing his love of photography and making a photo album of his towers so that they cannot be permenently dismantled by his brother.). Initially, all I could originally see was the ease with which he should be able to pick up those pieces and build newer, bigger, stronger towers. I knew in my heart that he is destined to build better towers in his future and that his brother may have done him a favor by freeing up the blocks to be reimagined in new ways. It is only tonight, hours later that I realize that maybe this is what God has been trying to get me to see this year. While I've been crying and howling about how the building blocks of my home and family have been ripped apart, God just sees that all the pieces are still there for me to rebuild with and if I can just stop crying and howling, I can start building a bigger and better foundation on which to build my self-esteem and life.  Thank you, my child, for helping me to realize my own short sighted ness and thank you, God for being patient with me while I've uselessly wailed.  Help me to embrace this new, better, stronger plan for my life and to no longer mourn what I used to think I needed. Let us both wake up tomorrow ready to build new towers of hopes and dreams with more permenent and solid foundations!

A Prayer for My Husband

Dear Lord,

Remember my husband as he tries so hard today to be the best man he can be.  Help him to see himself through my eyes and your eyes. Help him to remember his strengths and the journey he has already been on. Help him to feel the love that is always around him. Help him to love himself as we love him and to know the future ahead of him is bright even if it seems cloudy right now.  Help him know that your promises are for him and they guarantee the future.  Help him to know his incredible worth and help him to know happiness is in his grasp.

  In Jesus' name I pray,

Amen

In the beginning . . . .

I used to be a person who believed I was really special.  I believed I was smart, I believed I was attractive(ish), I believed that I knew what I was doing. . . and then I became a mom.  My first experience with motherhood was tough.  A trial by fire would probably be the best way to describe it.  It wasn't very long before I felt as if I knew nothing and had no direction.  The person I thought I was, the mom I had planned on being, none of it seemed to be panning out.  At some point, I remember breaking down in tears, sleep deprived and heartbroken with a colicky reflux baby, and it occurred to me that maybe God had put me in this situation for a reason.  Maybe I hadn't been listening or praying or connecting with him enough when I thought I knew everything.  Maybe my self confidence (self absorption?) had cut me off with him and maybe he had sent me to take care of this particular little soul so that I could get closer in touch with my own. It was time for me to stop trying to get back to the person I thought I was and trying to work toward the person I thought I should be and to start becoming the person God always meant me to be.

Four and a half years later, I don't even remember that woman I was and I'm much happier (for the most part) with the person I have now emerged as with God's help.  I look different on the outside, I feel different on the inside, I am healthier, and I feel like I am (usually) the mom my sons need and that I want to be, but I am still a work in progress.  I am still failing in many areas of my life and I am still struggling to become who God wants me to be.  I know it's time for me to find my confidence again.  I feel like this last year has been another stripping, this time of all the things that I used to believe would give me more confidence or that would be a source of comfort or confidence.  Now, I know it's just me and God and that he is all I can rely on. . . but that's a tall order.  Join me on my journey.