Grateful Acres

I have in no way arrived in this, but God has been working on something in my heart: "Perfect mom" and "Good mom" are not the same thing. I've been noticing that deep in my heart, when my mistakes and shortcomings slap me in the face, I immediately feel failure. The enemy has been lying to me, telling me: *Since I'm not perfect, I must be a failure. *If it's hard, it must be bad. *When training my kids is redundant, it's because I'm doing it wrong. ...but here's the truth: *"Consistent" means OVER AND OVER. *Shortcuts SEEM easier, but leaning in to the "hard" is well worth it. *And no parent is perfect, but God fills in the gaps... and when we pour our whole hearts into our children and husband and still have gaps, and the Father fills in for us, HE IS GLORIFIED! What a mighty God we serve.

Today my biggest boy came to me emotionally damaged by his brother knocking down a lego castle he had built. After his tears subsided he expressed to me that his brother had hurt his feelings, and we talked about how our actions affect other people, and about why rules are in place to keep us from hurting eachother's hearts. He told me that his heart was hurting, and I expressed to him that mine was too. My guys had a "guy night" (which they LOVE!) last night so that I could go to a meeting- not the fun kind, the kind where you dig around in your heart and let God and trusted fellow believers uncover things that are buried in the dirt. While meetings like this are sometimes necessary for growth, the digging and uncovering isn't necessarily comfortable ;) I didn't give my boy much detail, but I talked with him about how him and brother are working hard to learn how to be buddies, and explained to him that adults have to work to be "buddies" too, and tha...

My little family ((are we still considered "little??")) had lunch with a dear friend of mine yesterday, who is just-about-due pregnant with her first little boy. We had beautiful conversation about children, marriage, family, relationships, and -of course- labor and delivery. I revisited our conversation a lot in my head, and today some things fell into place in my heart. Recently I've been asked to walk through a tough situation. Unfortunately I must be rather vague about it, but I hope that what I can describe to you makes sense. I have felt my heart aching and groaning under the strain and pain of what I'm walking through. Today I was struck by the similarities between my situation and labor pains... the ebb and flow of pressure and pain, all with a goal in mind. As I mentally walked back through my four labor experiences,  my heart came to rest on a particular stage of labor. I thought most about the stage when my mind begins to resist the labor. When labor firs...