Blogging is good for me.
Writing helps me get stuff out of my head. It forces me to put words to my own issues. And doing that helps me to understand what’s really going on.
Like how I figured out while writing my “Frustrated Mommy” blog a while back that the real issue was my own selfishness. Or how writing about my logistics issue let me (first) throw a little pity party for myself and (second) get a grip on it. I was able to make some small changes that have made a big difference.
Mostly, I remembered to choose to be the mom again. Sounds dumb, maybe. But I had gotten pretty selfish and lazy. And it suddenly occurred to me as I was praying about it one morning that God had given me an assignment, for that day, to “be the mom.” And I could choose to accept the assignment or keep on letting things just float along. And as the floating wasn’t really working for us, I decided to step up again. I went back to purposely being the parent of my children. Being intentional. Being present. It was a little rough at first, I’ll admit, because I was out of the habit of being purposeful like that. But I kept making the choice, one moment at a time. And it didn’t take long for things to improve drastically.
I also realized that part of the issue was that we were super-close to my kids (the twins, in particular) moving into a new development stage. We were dipping our toes into coming attractions (new verbal skills, new physical skills, a new social level, more independence), but we weren’t quite there. And that in-between place is hard.
It helped to start being purposeful about reading my Bible again. And to hear that I was not alone, that this stuff really is a season of life, that we will survive it. It helped me to talk it out some with Eric, too. And I had to do some evaluation of how I was spending my time, to really think through are the right priorities for this time.
But the result is that we are better. Not perfect. Not on top of the logistics. Not totally managing my crazy life as well as I would like. But we are definitely better.
Thank you, Jesus. (And thanks for all your encouragement, too!)
Happy Monday!
June 20, 2011
yay! glad things are a bit better! Hope you have a great week!