Motherhood

Becoming a Mom for me has truly exposed me to the very core & left me undone.
I never thought I was a really selfish person.
I never thought I was an angry person.
Oh, but these little humans that I share a home with have been designed by God to push every button I have & know exactly the right combination in which to bring the worst out of me.
Sometimes I feel like they join forces. Auri starts off whining for a snack after barely touching the breakfast I made her, Luci is yelling because her demands can't be heard over Auri's whining. I have to, with my mind reading powers, figure out what kind of food Luci will eat today & then play the taste & see game. As soon as I sit down to eat & drink my lukewarm coffee they are done & ready to play. Our house is pretty chopped up in terms of rooms & because they are not quite at the age where they can play nice unsupervised for very long at all, I take my food on the go & rarely get to finish it.
Some Moms have girls who are so sweet & docile, content to sit & play with dolls for hours. Not mine! Both my girls are always on the move it seems. The messiest activities are the most attractive to them. They love variety & new experiences, which I blame 100% on my husband. Jeff is kind of the same way in an adult version. He expresses it in his desire for new & gourmet food most nights & rarely agrees to eat leftovers. The girls express it in looking for new activities every 20 minutes.
These days I feel like my whole day is spent on damage control. Toys, food, clothes & random crap is everywhere by dinner time & unless I want to spend my quiet evening time before bed cleaning I have to keep a lid on the mess somehow during the day. Some days I anticipate their next move & can keep the destruction at bay, other days it is a complete wasteland.
My complete inability to function in a messy house is my Mom's fault! Sorry Mom :) She is a clean freak & a control freak. She knows this. She did an excellent job teaching us kids how to keep a house clean & she had very high expectations. The downside is that with two very active girls a little piece of me has to die each day as I learn to live in chaos. This is hard for me. I get mean & nasty when I care more about the condition of my house than the condition of my girls. And the best part is my little 4 year old can spot it so fast, at least I know I am teaching her well on what a bad attitude looks like. She will often say, "Mommy, you're being nasty."
Whether it's Luci waking up too damn early in the morning, Auri finding a $10 tube of anti-fungal cream & rubbing it all over her body, Luci playing in the toilet water, Auri pooping in the front yard, wrestling Luci to just change her diaper or Auri dumping a pound of nails & screws on the shop floor; they are driving my ugliest attributes right out into the open air so I have to face them head on. It's a painful exorcism.
I'm not shocked to see my sin, just really sad & disgusted. I am extremely grateful for the blood of Jesus & His grace. I am learning more about Jesus, His love for me & His commitment to my salvation in this journey called Motherhood, then I ever did in any church service or program.
In the last year I have been stripped down to the most common denominator in so many areas of life that I am seeing it's all about Who loves me, who I love & how I love them.
The 2 words that cross my lips the most when talking to my girls every day are the two words I need the most in my own heart. Patience & Kindness. When I feel my head about to explode, profanity about to pour out my mouth, anger on my lips, if by the grace of God I catch myself all I can think of is: Love is Patient. Love is Kind. I know my girls will never be able to learn patience & kindness until they see it demonstrated in me first.
God help me be a patient & kind Mom.