Truth for the Trenches

I wouldn’t allow him to have four bowls of cereal for breakfast. Riding his bike in underwear was against the rules and coloring with Sharpies on his grandmother’s Pottery Barn couch was out of the question. In an attempt to ignore the yelling and having a stuffed animal thrown at my face, I was buried in Instagram. Surely enough scrolling would make me numb to the name-calling. My five-year-old was furious at me. He threw a Costco-sized glass grinder of Pink Himalayan Salt on the kitchen floor. Shocked that it shattered, he ran upstairs crying "I'm stupid. No one likes me."    Being screamed at by my children was becoming an hourly battle. “How does that make you feel?” my mom asked me over the phone as the tears rolled down my cheeks. Their reactions revealed a thunderous roar of my own fears that I had been trying to ignore. The story I had been telling myself was: “I never get anything right. They are angry at everything I do. I messed this entire motherhood thing up....

Is cleaning the house a struggle? Is keeping a sense of order like chasing hurricanes from one room to the next? I had the hardest time maintaining a cleaning schedule and tidiness when I was home every day, all day. It has seemed easier now that the kids are in school and I am working part-time. The truth is we just aren’t home to make the mess. On long weekends, breaks and snow days the house gets wrecked again and I find myself looking for some solutions to gain control. There are many cleaning schedules, routines, maid services and tv shows to park your kids in front of that all will give you the same product: a clean house! But, I found that they weren’t always the answer I needed. Making messes was done by a group of five people so why couldn’t the cleaning and picking up be done by five people as well? This is a process. It takes time to train kids how to do things correctly. That time could be used to just clean the room or take out the trash or put the books bac...

Psalm 126: 2-6 Our mouths were filled with laughter,      our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations,      “The  Lord  has done great things  for them.” The  Lord  has done great things  for us,      and we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, [ c ]   Lord , like streams in the Negev. Those who sow with tears   will reap  with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them. What makes you cry? Lack of sleep, physical pain, being yelled at, cleaning up blueberries off your freshly mopped floor, noise, arguing, not fitting into your clothes, repetitiveness of your days...didn't I just describe motherhood?  This Psalm has been rolling around in my head all week and being sung through the dishes and egg cooking and bath giving and lunch making. ...

My kids are in the phase of name calling. Some of them think it’s funny…sometimes. Some of them laugh when they call their brother a name but retort with “you’re going bananas” and now they are mad. The names can be hurtful (to a three-year-old) like “you a mean baby” or completely ridiculous like “poopy face” (because no one in this house is walking around with poop on their face!). They all come to me whining and depending on the situation and child’s age my words are different. But, to my six-year-old this morning I quietly said “you know that what he is calling you is not true. You know that name is not what you are or who you are so don’t listen to him.” You might not be around kids often but there are still names and definitions and assumptions being said about you and to you. Do you listen to them? There is a battle being waged in our minds. What to believe, what to listen to, what to ignore, what is right, what is wrong, when to say yes, when to say no, who to i...