My sweet girl. Like her mother, there are so many things she struggles with. One such morning, we’d had an issue, my sweet girl and I. As a result, she was missing a morning of fun and instead was attending a {boring} meeting with me. She sat at the back of the meeting room; I gave her some crayons, and a stack of paper to draw on along with some books to look at.
After the meeting, as I helped her gather up her items and collect her pictures, I found this photo. That scary blue thing with claws and teeth and weird eyes? Apparently that is me. I’m Mom V. It wasn’t a mystery about how she was feeling that morning. She’s pretty good with her expressing her feelings verbally and she also loves drawing. I’m glad that she has found a new way to express herself. I managed to hide my smile and we talked about the issue, about the consequences, about respect, about the amazing and unconditional love of family and of the Lord.
One of the parenting tips I’d heard in the past was not to take things personally. I don’t do it perfectly but I sure do try to remember that most of the time, it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with her choices, attitudes and internal battles; that sin nature of hers, that like mine, that naturally struggles against right and authority. Oh don’t get me wrong, we still deal with the issues and there are consequences for disrespect and disobedience of authority but it really helps things not to get worse when I am able to keep my emotions out of it and remain neutral.
This parenting thing? It’s getting harder to figure out as they get older. The younger years are physically demanding but as the years go by, it’s much more mentally involving as I help them to understand morality, biblical virtues, right, truth, goodness. The issues aren’t quite so simple any more. Or maybe they are…after all, He never changes.
