There's a little blond boy in my home that has been allowing me to really hone my parenting skills recently. When your almost four year old transfers back into a two year old, tempers flare, blood pressures rise, and chocolate is eaten. LOTS of it.
I love my baby. I love my baby. I love my baby. Even in the midst of extreme stubborness, disobedience, over the top silliness, frustration that results in not so niceness to his brothers by tackling them when they do something he doesn't like, and on and on, I love my baby. The words he's lucky he's cute are a daily phrase followed usually by Lord Jesus give me strength.
When a group of moms get together its very similar to when a group of teachers gets together. If you've never been around to hear either of these groups in conversation it's a very humorous, oxymoronic mix of elation and frustration. You can try and try to talk about other things but rabbits will inevitably trail to children whether they are the ones living in your house that call you mom or the ones who come daily to the place they assume is your house that hopefully just call you Ms./Mrs 'your name' and not other words they may have learned.
There's not many things that you can simultaneously never tire of yet want to run away from. You love your children with a passion you can't understand yet want to pull your hair out and that is a statement that will always ring true.
It never fails, however, that in the midst of my sharing (or venting depending on the mood), usually midsentence, I stop and realize that most everything I am frustrated about with my children I have struggled with in the past or done recently or possibly even could have been responsible for 5 seconds earlier. Well maybe except for the tackling part. I see myself in them in all ways, both the things I am most proud of and the things that make me have to stop, breathe, and count.
God sanctifies me through my babies. He continually shows me my own sin and my own struggles through parenting, but on the other side, that means He is continually showing me how much He loves me and how He stays with me. It's a beautiful cycle of seeing my need for God's forgiveness and seeing God's love for me through Christ and being able to give that forgiveness and love to them because of Christ in me.
The consequences of Eve's part in the original sin was not just pain in childbirth, it caused pain in parenting. It caused a rift between all parents and their children as flesh fights again flesh to achieve their own desires. That rift will grow if we try to fix in on our own.
So I love my baby. I love my baby. I love my baby. Not just for the gift he is and the joy he truly does bring, but because God grows my love through him. There is nothing my boys could do that would diminish my love for them, and If I can do that, even though I am so sinful, how much more will He be there for me?
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