Steadfast love

I can see my child glaring at me in my peripheral- A stare with storming eyes and pursed lips. I'm not looking in that direction on purpose because of the tears that are welling in my eyes. Continuing in the busyness of cleaning the bathroom makes it appear that the words being expressed don't sting like a hornet, piercing my heart.

Something along the lines of, "You're the meanest mom ever. You don't love me. You don't want me to have anything I want..." 

Ironic that these words are expressed as I am literally elbow deep in a toilet. Cleaning urine up is the last thing on my list of what I had planned to do with my Sunday evening. Yet, I do this out of love.

As my heart is hurting, my mind began to wonder. Is this how I make Jesus feel?

I quickly transform into a duck- growing waxy feathers and let the splenetic banter roll down my back. While I truly believe that there is a time for our children to see the real effects of how hurtful their words can be, this is not it. I am standing firm with my decision that has lead this child to feel such resentment-Towards me, someone who loves them more than they will ever understand.

As parents, we have this gift of being able to look ahead. While we cannot predict the future, per se, but we can guide their path from a real understanding of lessons learned. We have "been there" and "done that".

This situation gives me flash backs of the unsurmountable amount of times I have glared to Jesus. With a raging storm in my eyes and pursed lips, I throw tantrum after tantrum.

 "Why is life not easy? Can't you just give me what I want when I ask. When I plead? Don't you love me?"

 But if He gave us everything we asked for, exactly when we want it- what would life look like? Just as we guide and direct the steps of our children (with their best interests in mind), God orchestrates the twists and turns of our paths. We are unable to perfectly direct our children, but in pointing them back to Jesus, they will begin to understand that our love for them does not waiver in accordance with their mood-it is steadfast. While the hateful words stung a bit, I can rest in the fact that I don't have it all figured out (and never will), but Jesus does.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gentry Zoo

Image
To celebrate H-bugs first birthday, we went to the Gentry Zoo on Monday! She loved it. Both her and Malachi are big time animal lovers. I'm not sure where they get that from ;) Haly kept her eye on the Emu's the entire drive. She did not like them. There's this look she gives when she's not sure of a situation, and the birds definitely got that look. We named this guy Ted. Doesn't he look like a Ted? We aren't sure what he is, so we named him. The kids and I flipped out when he decided to stick his entire head in our car before we could roll up the window. He drooled on my skirt. The nerve! This Camel also stuck his entire German Shepherd sized head in our window! The best experience by far was the Zebras. Malachi just puckered up and laid a smooch on this guy. When we told him to do it again he informed us that it was "yucky" and then proceeded to scream "IT'S A WOLF"-or an Alpaca...with his head in Donovan's window with the most hil...
Read more

A whole year with the little ladybug

Image
I know this is a little late, but we've been a little busy :) July 10th, 2009 at 12:36 a.m. 6 lbs, 12 oz. I cannot believe my little girl is already one! It seems like she's still just a baby, and she is my baby! Going through the parenting with Malachi, I didn't realize how much they really change. It seems like in just a few weeks, she exploded into a new person. *She is 18.4 lbs. and 27.5 inches long. *She has a head full of hair now that can be fashioned into rubber banded pigtails (horns). She will NOT keep bows in. She will eat them. *She is walking all the time and everywhere. *She is climbing on the couch, our bed, up stairs and any chair she can reach. *She has 6 teeth, 2 bottom and 4 on top. *She has kicked the bottle except for night time. Even then, sometimes she's so tired she just rolls over and goes to sleep. She's having a hard time drinking from a sippy cup because of how fast it comes out-she always spits it everywhere. *She eats ever...
Read more

Quiet as a church mouse

The idiom “quiet as a church mouse” definitely gives off some negative connotations. First thoughts are-why would a mouse be lurking in a church? The short answer to that is definitely goldfish crackers and warmth. Another is -Eww. Rodents. They’re so...rodent like. My nick name is Meg-a-moo, or Moo for short. This was lovingly assigned to me from origins unknown. No, My cries did not imitate that of a cow when I was a baby-It just seemed like a fitting name. In researching the starting point from hence “quiet as a church mouse”-it is clear that this, much like my nick name, has no definite origin. It is a well known fact, however, that mice are meek. They make little noise on their own and scavenge for food and a place to make their home. In the 16th century, churches did not store food-whereas, here in 2018, the kids literally CANNOT go more than an hour without sustience. Enter Goldfish crackers. Cue mice. I am a Children’s Minister at a church here in Fayetteville. The job desc...
Read more