Rainbows & Butterflies

Its like 7:03 in the morning and I'm standing in my room bleary eyed, holding my newborn babe and watching my two older children holding hands, smiling and laughing and before I could finish my thought about how sweet they are, he pushes her to the ground to "wrestle".

Even though he was corrected 105 times for being too rough with his sister yesterday, he must have forgotten about the house rules and that "Groves don't hit each other" 'cause he's at it again. I tell him softly that he needs to not be so rough with her and to help her up. I guess "help her up" sounds a lot like "take her hands, and then yank up as hard as you possibly can" because that's exactly what he did. {Cue even more crying}

I looked at him, and asked if he would like someone to do that to him and if he's tired of mommy correcting him all the time {Lord knows I am!} and being in trouble? You know what he said?!?! Looked me straight in the eye and said "No"

Now, I've been known to have a short fuse and yell a time or two, but his no nonchalant, I don't care, attitude at 7:06 am was just too much for me! For his safety and survival, I told him to go in his room and sit on his bed. Tyler heard all the commotion in the room and asked me what happened. I told him of the push and shove and yank tirade and then I told him that I just am so irritated at our son, that truth be told "I could just shake him"{I'm getting really real with y'all for a moment, so bear with me and don't call DHS. please hear me loud and clear, I will never and have never physically hurt my children, but was saying this more to communicate just how at the end of my rope frustrated I was with Riley.} 

Tyler wasn't super understanding of my confessions of a mama drama queen confession. And so we in turn got into a little tiff about "how much he doesn't understand how hard being a mother is...." and I moved on to not handling any of this is a godly way and Tyler went off to work upset and I hated this day by 8 am...

After mulling this over in my head and letting the poison of grumpiness and anger filter through my family, I finally sat still long enough for that still small voice to be heard.

"I never said it was gunna be rainbows and butterflies"

But, if we're truly honest, isn't that what we think and feel like parenting should be? That if we do all the right things, that things should be smooth and easy for the most part.  But when my children interrupt my blog reading or spill milk on the floors I just mopped or ask for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich only to announce they actually wanted tuna, and when life as a mommy gets hard, my first thought is of myself and how hard I have it and how it shouldn't be this way. But no one ever said it shouldn't be this way. No one ever said its not hard, and I read a lot about the hardships of parenting, but we approach it with more apathy and passive humor, rather than seeing hardship as reassurance that if we're having resistance, we're probably doing it right, its just up to us to turn to the Lord to respond righteously to the chaos that being a parent brings.

Tyler and I were talking over the morning's shenanigans this afternoon and it came out that both of us had read our devotionals this morning. When this was realized, it made sense to me. You see Satan hates The Lord's children and there Tyler and I were, doing the "right" thing this morning and you'd think {and we do truly act like this} that everything should be hunky dory now and we can all just go about our day and skip and hold hands and eat marshmallows and smile. 

But this aint the prosperity gospel and Jesus did in fact promise hard ship to His followers. And Satan has a vengeance and he's lurking and waiting to steal, kill and destroy.

I don't know why I'm blindsided every time I'm attacked like this and "good golly miss molly, I haven't even had a cup of coffee yet and things are already falling apart". I start to feel bad for myself and poor me, and I lose the battle rather than see the attack for what it is and resist Satan and his schemes.

I've got to remember that this is holy work and sacred ground, this parenting business and I don't deserve hot coffee and peace and loving, getting along well children, and when I and my husband make a good point seek the Lord, we should make our selves ready for an even heavier battle, 'cause Satan hates a family that loves Jesus together. I shouldn't let my guard down as soon as I put that Bible down when I finish reading it. Parenting isn't rainbows and butterflies, its hard and sweaty and rough and I've gotta realize I'm in a battlefield, not at the end of a rainbow, swimming in a pot of gold...

If I had paid closer attention to the lesson in my devotional time of not being self-sufficient and not relying on my own common sense, I would have been able to draw on the Lord and found sufficiency in Him and relied on the reality of our falleness and responded with Riley's ridiculousness in a more level headed way and I wouldn't had thrown a fit about how hard this is.

So next time when parenting sucks, and nothing is as it should be and the kids are at it at 7 am, I should take a deep breath, ask Jesus for help and bring glory to God instead of acting like glory belongs to me...