I QUIT!

these past two weeks have been exceedingly difficult for me. some days i really want to say "I QUIT!" i quit being a mom, a housekeeper, a cook, a "fill-in-the-blank-here."

mostly it's because of the constant daily struggles with my boys. the bad attitudes, the picky eating, the teasing and tattling, the irresponsible behaviors and bad choices...frustration doesn't even begin to cover it!

i'm really not complaining...i love my boys to the end and back...i just long for those days of toddlerhood when they actually listened to me and got along. yes, i had toddlers like that!

and the moods! wow! you'd think i had teenaged girls for crying out loud! 

regardless...God gave my husband and i these three souls to care for and nurture. and sometimes i really cannot understand why. i feel i am failing miserably. 

then i read this blog post by Christina Fox (The Gospel Coalition) entitled "Parenting is Hard for a Reason."

Christina explains it quite wonderfully...that parenting is hard because God is using that venue to refine me. to point out my own sins of impatience and irritability and selfishness. and that God gives me grace in all of these things. and that i should extend that grace to my boys.  *sigh*

it's so simple yet so complicated all at the same time. i want to give them grace. but yet they need a consequence for their bad choices. but i make bad choices and God forgives me (yet i do suffer consequences for my own bad choices as well).

i suppose it all works out in the end. i am not perfect and my boys are not perfect. i shouldn't expect them to be. we are all imperfect beings striving to be Christ-like.

we will all fall short until that glorious day when Christ comes again to take us all home!
OH GLORIOUS DAY!