Tag: Toddler

At the End of Patience

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Raise your hand if you are ready for school to start. Are you finding yourself at the end of your patience?

I love my children and the slowness of summertime. I love the freedom to go to the pool, ride bikes, catch fireflies, and the excuse to eat more ice cream than normal. We have had a sweet summer, but as we inch closer to the start of school the inches of my patience are slowly disintegrating.

My Close Knit Kids Are Tried Of One Another

At the beginning of the summer it was so sweet to see my four children reunited. They played well, shared their toys, and encouraged one another. After two months together, I have noticed a large increase in tattling, screaming, and selfishness.

Just yesterday, a dear friend and mentor called me and when I picked up the phone there were children screaming in the background. Last night we came home from church camp and my children were screaming in the driveway.

I Am Tired

You all, I am so tired. I mean how many times can I say my coined momma phrases with a Mary Poppins attitude?

Listening is loving.

Ask a question if you want something instead of demanding it.

If someone asks us to stop we stop. 

First is not the worst when we get in the car. 

God has given your younger siblings two parents, and you as a sibling have the freedom to not be their parent. 

You are playing too rough.

No biting.

If our brother asks us to eat a piece off the cactus in his room, you don’t have to do it.

I have lost touch with my inner Mary Poppins in the recent days, found myself to be more like Maleficent, and I have wanted to give up.

God Is Not Tired

I was soberly convicted this morning about my impatience and lethargy when it comes to hanging in there with my children for these last few weeks of summer. God has never given up on me in seasons where I have been doing much worse than eating cactus. God is a pursuing God, God is an active God, and God is a patient God.

When we find ourselves tired as parents, we can find everlasting patience in Him.

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary,  and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40: 29-31).

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Peter 3:9).

As I stepped out of my feelings of weariness this morning I refocused on God and His Word. It is a high calling to show my children Jesus, and a great privilege. I am so grateful that God’s mercies are new every morning and today can be the first new day to model repentance and faith to my children.

How Can We Walk Alongside Those Who Are Tired When We Are Tired Ourselves?

First, we repent of our shortcomings and lack of patience with our children and we remind them of the truth that God is a pursuing and patient God.

Then we point our children to truth in God’s Word. I used a short devotional today from Susan Hunt’s Big Truths for Little Kids.

Next we pray. We explain to our children that the kind of love and patience we are asking for is supernatural and cannot be accomplished in human strength. We love simply because God first loved us.

And in a few short hours, we will probably do this all over again. This is perseverance and a testimony of a real an active God to our children.

Hope For Those Who Are Tired

Today, I am thankful for a pursuing God who is teaching me to depend on His patience instead of my dried-up well of human patience. This is a truth I know, but even though I know the truth, as a human, sometimes, I fail to walk in the truth.

God is redeeming His people all the time. We simply need to come to Him. I pray I can show my children more of my  life of  dependence upon a loving and patient God rather than a worn out mother operating out of a dried-up well of human patience.

God never tires. His mercies are new every morning. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Great is His faithfulness, even when He needs to remind me of the same thing over and over again.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 28-30).

Listening is Loving

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Yesterday I was putting mountains of clothes away upstairs as I watched my three boys in the backyard below me digging in a large hole of mud.

I had a report to give in about an hour and the babysitter arriving in forty-five minutes. I was already whirling around my home. I had no extra in-case-of-mud-buffer built in to my schedule.

I let the boys dig and kept putting away clothes until the pile has come to it’s end. Then I walked downstairs trying to breathe deeply to prepare myself for three mud covered children and also a quick prayer to Jesus that I would exude the fruits of the spirit instead of spewing the impatience of my tired flesh.

To my great surprise I found muddy clothes and boots in the laundry room and my boys washing the mud off their ankles and hands in the kitchen sink, the exact same process of demudding I have walked them through time after time over the last eight years. Without me saying a word, they just did what they were supposed to do.

And when I praised them my five year old simply replied, “Mom, we were just listening and listening is loving.”

Cue a:

Wait, are these MY children?

moment.

My children and I have not gotten to this place of automatic obedience overnight and pretty much, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, sixty-five times a day it feels as if my children are not listening to my voice at all.

But this moment was my diamond in the rough. The one moment I can cling to in three hundred and sixty-five days and see just for one moment my words, my constant words on repeat all day every day are not falling on deaf ears. That slowly, ever so slowly my words are settling into the nooks and crannies of the hearts of my children.

Listening is loving was very much our summer love language last summer.

I developed this love language of listening is loving between my kids and I for the following reasons:

  1. Listening is life-giving to mommy.
  2. Listening is not just hearing but hearing followed by action.
  3. The action of listening must occur all the way, right away and with a happy heart.
  4. Listening is an important skill for all of life.

I have said listening is loving, I have chanted listening is loving, I have yelled listening is loving, I have whispered listening is loving in the ears of my four children as they sleep soundly at night.

Like a broken record for almost an entire year. Listening is loving have been the words I have both yelled and cried to my children.

As I saw my children doing what they were supposed to do I couldn’t help but remember the words a friend of mine said to me almost five years ago. Rachel, you sow. And you sow. And you sow. Then much later you will reap. 

You sow. And you sow. And you sow. Then much later you reap. Much later.

Yesterday’s scene of muddy clothes automatically in the laundry room and children automatically demudding at the sink came after an entire year of constantly repeating listening is loving to the ears and to the hearts of my children.

There are so many moments when I am so tired of sowing. My heart screams phrases similar to: Mommy does not want to sound like a broken record.

Planting wisdom and words in to the hearts of my children is very similar to the dirty, back breaking work of planting seeds outside in the fields.

I’m scattering these words like seeds into the soil of their hearts so that with hope and prayer and divine intervention one day these seeds will grow and produce fruit. Produce evidence that my words have taken root. Produce automatic obedience all the way, right away and with a happy heart.

We have so much further to go with listening is loving.

I will probably say listening is loving a million times more, have three-thousand more bad days with a few diamonds scattered here and there.

But to reap a harvest of children who know that listening is loving to others with hope that they will connect this truth of listening is loving to listening to God and believing His truth…. that is the kind of harvest I am sowing for.

That kind of harvest is what makes the broken record of saying listening is loving a million times more worthy of the dirty, back breaking work of sowing.

Listening is loving.

You sow. And you sow. And you sow. Much later you will reap.

When X Marks the Spot

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I have a child who enjoys drawing check marks on all of his drawings. To him, a check mark is his mark of approval on his drawing. If he feels good about a drawing, it gets a check mark at the top right next to his five letter name written in chunky crayola marker and all caps.

You can imagine my hurting heart when I walked down our staircase one afternoon to notice a brown X on my kneecap in our 16 X 20 family canvas that hangs on the wall right in our entry way at the end of our staircase. Like Tonya Harding had been there, planning her next hit.

I had recently corrected my child for drawing on the walls in my house and sent him to the bottom step of that staircase, where all four of my children have to sit and wait for me to come and sit with them, discipline them, hold them, talk to them about their hearts, pray with them and reconcile with them. A place that is worn from the never-ending merry go round of training up kids.

My child literally X-out his mother in our family picture. The very opposite of the marks I see him draw on his favorite drawings. He clearly was marking his disapproval of me. In permanent marker. The ultimate and forever mark of disapproval.

The child who in this picture I am holding close to my very own heart. The child who smooches with me with pursed out lips. The child who states I am the one he loves the most in the whole world. He put an X on me in our family photo that hangs in our entryway.

My initial reaction was fury. This is my baby. I carried him in my body, nursed him, held him and I make sure his animal blanket is smoothed down perfectly every night at his request.

I was both angry and heartbroken.

I’m not the kind of mother one would X-out. I sing the songs, make the freezer meals, play the games, read the books, volunteer in the classrooms. I should have a thousand green check marks of approval for heaven sakes.

As I continued in fury, and woe as mes, I had to think. Was this X marking the spot of something deeper? Was I hurt because I want to be liked by my kids? Am I the kind of parent who desires to be liked more than I care about the trenches and the hard, ugly places of correcting my children when they are wrong on that step? Am I willing to be ready for the long road of all the X-marks-the-spot moments of the future?

Where do I look to find my green check marks? What is my identity really rooted in? How much my kids approve of me? Or that Christ approves of me not because of my X to check mark ratio but because of what He has done?

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

This one X on our family picture in permanent ink, marking the spot of my own pride. Revealing the deep desire I have within to be a perfect mother, a well-liked mother, a green check-marked ten-times over mother.

I know some of you out there are with me too on the step. With your babes upset with you over correction and discipline.

I just think motherhood there are no guarantees of a long scroll of green check marks. Maybe in forty years, but in the trenches, there will be Xs. But in Christ we get it all. We get his robe of righteousness, we get all His green check marks.

If we are faithful mothers who sit on the steps of life with our kids the Xs will come. There will be times when our correction will stir up the desire in their childish hearts to mark us in Xs either in their minds or right on the family picture in the entryway. We can only be faithful to teach our children about their hearts (and vandalism). We have to faithfully walked with our kids whether in the moment the approve or disapprove of our correction.

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11)

The family picture in the entryway was marked with an X one year ago and it still sits there at the bottom of our entryway. As a reminder for me. That if I am a faithful mother, committed to raising up kids I will keep on sitting on that step even when the Xs come. Because my identity in in something greater than what kind of mother I am. I belong to Jesus. And that sisters, is more than enough.

passionate. not terrible. passionate.

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She sits there in her room, tiny plastic pieces of treasures, books, pink feather pens surround her, a crooked tiara on her head and streaks of orange marker are drawn on her leg from her kneecap to her hot pink painted toenails.

She is forty pounds and forty some inches tall. She is three and she is the fiercest tiny human I have ever known.

I can’t remember whether we were discussing which pajamas she should wear for the night or who should put them on her. But I remember her being assertive with me. She was fierce when she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, No mommy. I will do it myself. Humpf.

After having three boys in three years when I discovered I was pregnant for the fourth time I was certain it would be another boy. Boys were what I knew. Surely God was not going to challenge me with the newness of raising a daughter. 

Oh but God has a funny way about things and He did in fact turn my world upside-down and gave us that daughter. We have loved more than we thought we could love and I personally have been challenged more than I thought I would be raising something supposedly filled with sugar and spice and everything nice.

We are so grateful. I am so grateful for her. Our little girl, the last of four children in four years and the only girl, she is precious to all of us.

But she is so fierce. Frustratingly fierce. Passionate. Wanting to go about things her own way. Princess dresses, painted-toes, Batman masks and Boba Fett blasters.

She regularly will grab her brothers and scratch them so close to their eyeballs, leaving Harry Potter-like scratch marks on their foreheads.

She pushes smaller children at play dates. Moments worthy of making me want to crawl into the playhouse and hide or maybe cry.

She was the first of my four children to try out a passion-filled shut up to my face while I was correcting her.

And a few weeks ago while we were visiting my grandmother and grandfather in New York my grandmother had asked one of her kind friends if she would watch our four kids for us while my husband and I attended a grown-ups only event. When we returned there was my girl asleep on the floor. She had protested with my grandmother’s friend all night long. My grandmother’s friend reported to me that the boys were great and she couldn’t understand much of what my girl said all night except when she looked her in her eyes and clear as day said to her, “YOU are NOT welcome here.” 

She just straight-up tells selfless, helpful friends of her great-grandmother they are not welcome. sigh.

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My sweet forty pound daughter. The girl with the big bows in her whispy brown hair and bangles all the way up her arm can be quite challenging. And yesterday as she was being assertive with me I felt the words creeping into my head. Terrible Twos. Even though she is not two anymore. Those words terrible and twos were lurking in the back of my head.

I had to remind myself.

Challenging, yes. 

Terrible, no. 

Fierce, tenacious, passionate. Yes.

Terrible, no.

Assertive, opinionated, strong-willed. Yes.

Terrible. No.

In the moments when the anger starts to bubble beneath the surface and my vat of patience is running low I find myself grabbing on the posh words of parenting which often flash in my face on the Facebook Newsfeed. Terrible Twos, threenager. This is how the world sees her.

And honestly. I have written about this before and finding myself needing to write about this again. These posh sayings are not helpful to me as a parent at all. Parenting is difficult enough. And when you are drowning the last thing you need is the world chanting bitter snarky sayings to you from the top deck. Oh you’re drowning, yeah that’s terrible. It will be a year of terrible, terrible drowning. And then the next year of it will be even worse, but good luck with that.

What I need when I feel the hard prongs of raising up children is someone to throw me a life preserver and hop in the water with me.

And when I breathe deeply, I remember God is with me in the difficult waters. Not shouting unhelpful sayings from the boat but right in the difficult waters.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.

Isaiah 43:2

I can chose to breathe deeply, step out of my frustration, my impatience and on Sundays the crazy eyes produced by my aching pride when she is tenacious in front of a crowd in the front row at church.

I can pray for more peace. More patience. More self-control.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

John 14:27

I can breathe deeply and see the child standing in front of me, in the middle of the tiny plastic pieces treasures, books, and feather pens; with the crooked tiara and the orange marker drawn on her leg.

I can breathe and I can see her as God sees her. Precious. Uniquely knit together. Wonderfully made. A passionate girl in a crooked tiara trying to sort out this thing called life the same way I am.

And then I can be moved to compassion for her. I can remember that sometimes feeling great passion for things produces great emotion. And while I am a grown up and do not experience great passion about pajamas, my sweet girl has only been picking out and putting on her own clothes for a few months now and she does indeed experience great passion about pajamas.

And in my compassion I can correct her outside of my anger and impatience. I can help teach her proper words and tones for communicating independence because while I can be gracious and identify with big emotions and tenacity I will not tolerate sass or disrespect. Girl may be fierce but girl must be respectful to her momma.

And I can remember she is in the waters too. That God is with her. The rivers of passion and difficulty will not consume her either.

That in these challenging passionate days in the middle of tiny plastic pieces of treasures, books, pink feather pens, crooked tiaras and streaks of orange marker down her legs, the Lord is near and He is working on both of our hearts.

We are on a journey. It feels terrible but we will get through it. And God promises the waves of difficulty will not overcome either of us.

The Last Load of Laundry

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There used to be a time when I had my family’s laundry situation under control. I was able to follow the schedule, put the clothes away and keep the bins from overflowing in a manner that felt natural and protected me from feeling bitterness over the bountiful bins of what seems to be a never ending battleground of washing clothes and undergarments.

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But now here in this present time, I can’t seem to keep up with our laundry situation any longer. My bountiful bins are more often dirty than clean and our sock situation has my children buying into the idea that everyday is “silly sock day” at school.

Even this weekend as my husband and I have rallied; I have been faithful to get the clothes in the wash and into the dryer methodically while he has been the precise and ever important folder swooping in to complete the job. Our new weekend rule is if my husband wants to watch a game of some kind on television he must be folding and watching.

Even with our go get ’em efforts and even as we see the end of the dirty laundry coming into view, I realize it will only be moments before another article of clothing will be dirtied and the cycle and balance of the bountiful bins will begin once again.

And again and again and again.

Until (what feels like) Jesus comes back and there will no longer be laundry.

As my heart became discouraged thinking about the eternal cycle and endless bountiful bins, I took a deep breath, a step back and I remembered that every discouraging phase I find myself in as a mom has always simply been a phase.

A moment. A blink. A millisecond.

Just a millisecond ago I was washing 0-3 month baby clothes in Dreft Detergent.

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And a millisecond from now my children can start folding their own laundry while they watch Saturday sports with their dad.

And a millisecond from then I will be back to folding laundry for a party of two once again. Because in a millisecond these precious kids, whom I only have for such a short while will be grown and gone.

So as I anticipated the last load of laundry, after taking a breath and a step back, I found a moment to be thankful for the bountiful bins, mismatched socks and moments of feeling like I am in an endless cycle of wash, spin, dry, fold.

This quote is borrowed from something I saw on Etsy from a Laundry Room sign I want to hang up in my home as an everyday reminder to be thankful for this phase in motherhood of bountiful laundry bins and what seems to be endless cycles.

“Today I will be thankful for all the little socks, the grass stained jeans and the endless piles of laundry. For there will come a day when the laundry basket is empty and these days will be profoundly missed.”

Thinking about a day when the baskets will be empty makes me feel thankful for the bountiful bins today because there will be a day when that last load of laundry will bring grief and sadness instead of relief.

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If you loved this post or connected to my words in anyway would you mind sharing this with a friend or commenting below? Thank you for stopping by.

Rachel