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Photo courtesy of Flickr, click the image for the original.[/caption]A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge,
but the mouth of the fool gushes folly
Proverbs 15:1+2
I have failed at these verses BADLY for the last couple of years. The stress of our family situation had just pushed me to the point of EXPLOSION. I was relying so strongly on myself to deal with the pain, hurt, anger, fear, stress, discouragement, shame and embarrassment that I was feeling and it pushed me to the point of violence in my heart. A heart violence that has spilled over to the point of harsh, overly loud, aggressive volume meant to intimidate and scare - not because I want my guys to be intimidated, scared and fearful of me, their mama - but because I had gotten to a point of feeling out of control. Like nothing that I did would be effective unless I used those tactics. I was feeling them myself.
I had lost the knowledge of how to function without those things.
I still struggle with yelling but I have it better under control now than I did three years ago. When I first became a mama I was patient, loving and gentle. About the time that baby number two came along though, I was losing my grip. I shared this blog post when reality first hit me. I have improved a lot since then but I still struggle. It's a real fight to die to that part of myself when I get angry and lose patience. But I'm working on it.
I am working really hard on it. When I feel myself getting so angry with the boys that I just want to explode I have been putting them in their room to play and sitting on the couch asking Jesus for grace and reminding myself that they are such good boys, nothing that they are doing is anything worth getting so angry about.
I don't want them to think of me as a mean, yelling, harsh mom. I want to be a gracious, tender and gentle kind of mom. Nurturing and loving in how I respond and treat them. I want them to grow up like that and in order for that to happen they need an example of that.
I feel like I have a restart with baby number three (thank you Jesus for your refreshed grace daily). I don't want him to grow up knowing the yeller mom that the other two - (can you hear my heart breaking? this is hurting so badly to say) - have come to know. I want to fix my image to my first two in the meantime as well.
So here's to a hard journey but a freeing one.
What do you struggle with? Is there something that is scary or shameful for you to share that I can encourage you through?
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