I finished a book tonight called "The Value of a Praying Mother" by Isabel Byrum. It was a very valuable book for me. It had many things in it that were aha moments for me. This was the book that stemmed by post about praying with my kids. She points out that allowing your children to come to you with any problem, and responding with gentle words and never harshness is the way to lead them to come to you with any problem at any time in their development. The main story was about a girl and her mother. The girl turned to her mother with any problem and developed into a wonderful, Godly woman that fully relied and trusted in God. That is precisely what I want for my children, I thought. I began praying that I wanted our kids to trust in God completely. And then I realized the real thing that came to mind is for my kids to not get hurt by other people. Then, God helped me to realize that the one person in their lives that they trust completely and rely on to fulfill their every need and their every desire, is the one person that hurts them the most. I don't want them to be hurt, that's one of the greatest desires in my heart for them, and I'm the one that hurts them most. I'm harsh too much, I'm not gentle enough. I don't invest as much time listening to them as I should. I'm going to be working on this. I feel like my mothering skills are good. I feel like my Christian mothering skills realllllly could use some work.
I'm struggling to try and get my thoughts in order on this, so I'm sorry that this post seems disjointed.
Your thoughts are not disjointed at all and I understand completely. It's going to be difficult since you witnessed my way of handling stress--yelling. I'm better than my Mom so maybe you'll be better, too--and on down the line. You realize the work you have to do and that's the first step. Love you....
ReplyDelete