I got up late, having gone to bed at 2 am after re-organizing our basement. I then proceeded to spend an hour drifting in and out of consciousness on the couch, trying to “study” my passage from Isaiah for the morning.
Needless to say I don’t remember anything from it.
After dragging myself around waking everyone up, putting some clothes on, grudgingly clearing off the counter, I put some coffee on to brew, hoping it would take the edge off and help me to “wake up and shape up”.
This wasn’t really to be the case. I was on edge all morning, short-tempered, rushed and mentally and physically exhausted, blasting through lessons to complete before swimming lessons took over.
Afternoon comes around and kids have “quiet time” while I bang out a post (fortunately not about anything overly significant {craft day} because I was not in the right mind for being an effective anything to anyone). Quiet time was more like crash and yell time, which frustrated me even more.
Then, of course, my sour mood started to rear its ugly head in all 3 of my children. While I would bark at one for not having yet cleared the table, the toddler would bark at her older brother about nothing in particular. Then I would hear JJ yelling in frustration over a k’nex creation falling apart. Then someone would break into tears, or yelling, over something insignificant.
All because this momma chose to let a rough start to the day carry on throughout without addressing it in herself. And we all know, when momma ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy.
We, as mothers, have the greatest influence on our children – more than anyone in the world. They listen to what we say. They copy cat our actions, our words, our attitudes – the good, the bad and the ugly. They look up to us and look to us for love and encouragement. And we simply cannot be a good, loving example to them if we don’t deal with the ugly sin in our hearts.
Given the great privilege we have to minister to the hearts of this next generation of God followers, we want nothing more than to display godly attitudes for our children to model. But we aren’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, and days like these definitely happen.
WHEN it happens – because it will – don’t condemn yourself. Remember, they’re watching you. And not only have they been watching and absorbing your actions and attitudes all day, they will be watching to see how you respond to your own sin. Don’t delay dealing with it, even if you don’t feel like it!
The most important, influential, redeeming, humbling thing you can do when you realize your attitude has taken a trip down south with the family, is to gather your loved ones around you, and pray. Pour out your heart to God for his redemption of the attitudes misused and wasted, confess your sin and repent, cry out for his strength to change and calm your heart, to continue on throughout the day, doing everything to his glory. Then turn to your young ones and ask their forgiveness.
Your children will see your heart, your desire to do what’s right, to humble yourself before God and them, to ask forgiveness. When this genuine repentance and restoration of fellowship happens, it’s pretty difficult to continue on in the same mood as before!
When you get knocked down, don’t stay down. That’s right where Satan wants you to be because he has rendered you completely useless in influencing your children toward God’s kingdom! Get up, deal with the attitudes, right the situation, and keep moving on toward bringing glory to God!
