I keep this picture by the chair I sit in when I am reading or studying or praying.
It helps me to really focus my prayers on those
dearest to my heart.
My four, beautiful, wonderful children.
This picture helps me to remember how life was much more innocent
and carefree when they were this age.
Little did I know then all the ways in which I would fail as a mom.
Ways I would feel inadequate and not know what to do.
Oh how I would agonize when I didn't know what to do.
The regret that would pile on me in later years.
A burden of regret so heavy it threatens to crush me daily.
The burden that makes me cry out for a do-over.
Thankfully this burden of regret serves a purpose.
It helps me to increase and sharpen my prayers to really intercede for my children.
It humbles me.
It reminds me that they have a heavenly Father who not only loves them more than I do (which is amazing to me)
but He can also intercede powerfully in their lives.
He will use all of my mistakes for their good somehow.
Mind blowing.
I made mistakes to be sure, but nobody could love them more than I do.
No heart will break over their heartaches more.
No heart will rejoice over their joys and victories more than mine.
No heart will watch, pray, worry, love, agonize, rejoice, or root for them
more than I will.
I am absolutely amazed that I received the gift of THESE FOUR children.
←→
Ann Voskamp has a far better way with words than I do.
I just copied and pasted them here.
Ann Voskamp on Mother's Day
Yeah — if you’re being gut honest here — you don’t really want the cards or the flowers.
Or what gets wrapped up in shiny paper, or stuffed in a bag with wrinkled tissue paper, or anything that gets tied up and presented with these dangling tendrils of curling ribbon.
What you really wanted is to be extraordinarily, obviously, good at this. At this mothering thing.
You wanted to be the best at this.
You wanted to take the podium and gold medal in mothering — not take a million timeouts behind some locked bathroom door, turn on the water so no one hears you sobbing at what a mess this whole shebang is, and how you’d like to run away. Ask me how I know?
Honest? You wanted to be more.
You wanted to be more patient — you wanted to never lose it, to always have it together, to keep calm and that is all, always, — and yeah, take their tantrums with a grain of salt instead of throwing one of yours that turned out to be a first class tsunami and a tad bit more dramatic than theirs.
You wanted more flashes of wisdom in the heat of the moment when you had no bloody idea what was the best thing to do, when you flung up an S.O.S. prayer, made The Call on the deal that was facing the kid and you —- and the kid hated you for it and you crawled into bed feeling like a heel who always gets it wrong when everyone else gets it right.
You’d about give your eye teeth and your left arm for more time. More time to get it more right and less wrong.
You want a do-over.
You wanted to be better.
Never once did you ask to come stumbling into this with all this baggage — all this mess that your parents sent you packing with, all these unhealthy-coping mechanisms, all these triggers, all this unspoken broken.
What you really want, desperately, wildly, in spite of everything — is for them to remember the good…. to remember enough of the times you whispered, “I Love You” … to know how many times you broke your heart and how hard you really tried.
All you want? Is for them to feel a deep sense of safety, that they are safe to trust people, safe to dream large, safe to believe, safe to try, safe to love large and go fly — and you need to know that you haven’t wrecked that. That they feel the certain, tender embrace of your love —- in spite of all the storming times you acted unlovely.
