Blogging

Oh dear blog, I know I've all but abandoned you.  I love blogging.  Some days.  Mostly, I love the results of blogging, cataloging our days.  Organizing our life happenings in a fashion for reflection.  But lately, I nearly collapse into our recliner or sprawl on our couch at the end of the day and just can't muster the energy to add one-more-thing to my to do list. 

Our holidays were full of sweetness, generosity, and warmth.  As well as tornadic weather, stormy skies, whining, tantrums, and sickness.  My personality is such that I'm immediately drawn to focus on the worst.  I see the worst and mull it over.  This is one of the reasons blogging is so important for me.  I remember to record the beauty.  To focus on the positive.  I can't just push away the negative, nor should I completely, but I need to learn not to let it overwhelm me.  Do what I can to change it, then dwell on it no longer. 

I can not begin to describe all I learn about myself watching my daughter.  We've all heard it before, our children are little mirrors of us.  This couldn't be truer in the case of my daughter.  As I speak words of truth into her life I'm learning I so often speak them to myself.  Then, I must humbly admit to her that I'm still learning these same truths and ask her if she'll join me on this journey. 

It's hard watching your child struggle with the things you struggle with daily.  It's hard not to fear what her future will hold.  It's hard not being able to fix it and make it easier for her.  Praise God for mercy, grace--Christ.  Oh how we need Christ.

The days I am hardest on my children I nearly always look back and realize its the day I'm most in need of God's grace for my own flaws, and then I immediately recognize how little of this same grace I extended to my little ones.  Humbling.  Convicting.  Overwhelming--if not for grace.  Grace to forgive myself.  Grace to start over again tomorrow.  Or even that night as I sneak into my children's room and tearfully apologize to my sweet sleepers, begging forgiveness, promising to try a little harder tomorrow to love more sacrifically and extend more grace.

Grace.  My children are amazing pictures of forgiveness and grace.  They never cease to forgive me.  To love me immediately following yet another one of my impatient outbursts.  Their hugs and I love yous come even following some of my worst moments.  I have never in life experienced anything as challenging as raising children.  Nor anything quite as rewarding.

So blog, if you miss me, know I'll return...eventually.  If I'm absent it's because I'm giving every last ounce of energy to motherhood.  A decision I know I'll never regret.