One thing is true: you can never stop learning and growing. I tell my children if you stop learning and growing: you’re dead… morbid, I know!… but what I mean to say is each day holds opportunities where we learn and make mistakes, or succeed…it’s just life. We have breath in our lungs, we move, we eat, etc. You want to learn from the day…
I am still in process each day.
As parents, we want to raise our children well. We have to be intentional. We have our five human children and two doggies...I am learning so much about myself and my children and the animals. Teaching and training has to be done for human and animals …and I gotta figure out that balance of love, tenderness, authority, firmness yet meaningful teaching… oh boy! I’m training me! I am practicing a sense of …”What is going on? What am I feeling? How is impacting me? and other questions I learning to walk thru. So help me God!
Here’s what I am working on this week…and as I grow each day:
I want to be a mom who experiences her emotions and circumstances fully and responds well+appropriately. I get mad a lot. I get sad a lot. Things hit me hard and multiplied by doing this with and for five kids, my husband, two dogs, 5 chickens and then (not finally but in the mix) me… I gotta run thru the list! Caring for people and animals is work.
Motherhood is full…
full of failures, full of successes and celebrations, full of work, full of training, full of correcting, full of teaching, full of busy, full of go-go-go, full of heartache and heartbreak (and heart-brakes ,too–where you take a step back to really look at things before reacting)…
I find that I get angry a lot but it’s because I don’t fully engage… I am learning. I can be angry and have good reason but need to make sure I do the anger thing well to advocate for me and others’ health and heart.
So, here’s to being willing to mature and learn to grow up as I raise my children and family to know God and know themselves…in turn they can be aware of the world they live in and respond well.
My (current) list of things that make me angry…
disrespect, bullying, hitting, yelling, name-calling, violence, oppression, partiality and favoritism….I am angry at American nationalism and capitalism… really: greed.… Other things in our nation: White American Christianity (losing sense of global church and viewing privilege, power and prosperity as signs of Christian well-being), greed, senseless killings of people, political swings, lack of respect for humanity and God… there’s a lot.
So… in the practice of confession, repentance, and wanting to grow up: I am sad about the world and mad about the conditions some have to live in but I trust in an all knowing God. I choose to get involved in the community to contribute. I will raise our children in a reverence for love and respect of God’s image in people and all creation.
Thanks for reading. I’d love to know what emotions do you feel like you don’t fully feel and want to process better?
Abundant Mommyhood 