Children....Hard but Worth It!

We waited a long time to have our 1st child. Jim and I were married for 5 years before we had Payton. When she finally arrived, I felt totally overwhelmed and I remember thinking I could not believe how unprepared I was for this kind of responsibility. There should be some kind of preparation class to give you some hints and tips when you have your first child! Books just didn't cover all the bases. Even with Connor, it was overwhelming because I now had to juggle 2 kids and their individual personalities. There was a time when I told myself it would get easier as they get older. Oh, how wrong I was!

This brings to me to the very challenge I deal with daily....morning, late afternoon (when Payton gets home from school), and night. My kids fight like you wouldn't believe. They bicker. They tease each other. And, even when I attempt to hide in the little area by my computer, they somehow migrate to me and do all of the bickering and teasing right over my left shoulder! As you can imagine, this has caused some frayed nerves on my part. I've tried to separate them. I've tried to coach them to work it out. I've tried to ignore them and let them work it out. Nothing has been 100% successful. Not to shift the blame, but their behavior pushes me over the edge and makes me become the kind of parent I do NOT want to be.

We are just born with the natural ability to sin....to be bad, to do what we are not supposed to do. When we have our first child, we think they are PERFECT! I remember feeling like I needed to shield Payton from the "bad" to prevent her from being corrupted. Because, of course, its someone elses fault that our kid knows the bad things they know! It's either the public school kids or the neighbor kids or all of the other "negative influences" that corrupt our "perfect" children. In reality, our kids are born with the inherent ability to sin and to do it repeatedly. It is our job, as parents to model behaviors that we want them to exhibit. If we want our kids to be honest, we have to be honest. If we want our kids to be compassionate, we have to be compassionate. If we want our kids to treat others kindly, we must do the same. It's a constant battle and hard, for the "average human" to keep this up 24/7. I often wonder if the bickering Jim and I do influences Payton and Connor. Is that why they argue the way they do? Am I modeling all of the characteristics I want for Payton and Connor? The "parenting" doesn't get easier! It gets harder, in fact. The video I attached is such an inspiration for me to be my best for my children and to tirelessly help them become the people God created them to be. It's also an amazing illustration of God's love for each of us. Sometimes it's hard to imagine in our human heads that God loves us like we love our own kids times a thousand (or more)!



Its really worth it to watch the story behind the video: