Good Days

Last week I had some hard mommy days. Lots of whining, disobedience, patience wearing thin, loneliness, anxiety. You name it. The kids picked up on it and reciprocated. I started a post about expectations in motherhood. About how easy it is to struggle with contentment and how tired I am and how I miss flying somewhere on an airplane. About how I actually thought that when I became a stay at home mom, I'd bake fresh pies and keep the house perfect. About how I never imagined that 5 years in and we'd still be biting our fingernails to pay our bills. Silly Megan; naive at least. I thought a lot about how I always wanted a big family, but with just 2 kids, I sometimes feel like I'm drowning and can't fathom the idea of having more, at least not for a long time. I thought a lot about how much I am adoring the book, Desperate and how I feel like someone wrote it just for me. Really, how did the authors know??? I'm not actually the only one feeling this way? I'm not the first mom who's bone tired and down in the dumps and nervous about the future and food additives and a million other things?

And what's really important, anyway?

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." -Luke 22:37

This is. This is the most important. When this is in place, everything else falls into place too. This is worship and this is submission and this is what we were created to do.

"Love you neighbor as yourself." -Luke 22_39

This is the 2nd most important. When I love my kids as I love myself, I am obeying. And when I do this, I am teaching them to love and obey. Naturally, they want to love themselves most, just like I do. These are teaching moments: love God, love each other. "Graham, share that toy with Patrick, because that is one way to show him love."

Anyway, after some prayer and a new attitude adjustment on my part, we've had several really good days. Not that everything just clicks into place, but kind of. When I'm patient and loving and pick my battles and  take the time to properly discipline Graham, he reacts positively. He hugs more. We laugh more. It makes it fun to go out to the park; to go to the beach. I tell him, "You're amazing!" because he is. He is an amazing little guy. When I tell him, "I'm proud of you!" for eating a carrot, he glows and takes another bite. (And then he spits them up 1/2 later. Still working on that.) When I celebrate with him every single time he pees on the potty, he keeps up the good work says, "YAY!" every time and we're both so happy.

I'm still tired. And I'm still longing for a getaway and I'm still annoyed that the baby is hard to get to sleep and that Graham usually screams when he's in the car because he thinks his seat belt is "too tight!" I still get nervous when I hear things about how the flouride in the water is going to kill us all. But I'm just going to keep on telling myself to love my Lord and love my neighbor and we'll go from there.

Memorial Day Hike

Beach!