"Prayin"

I remember a friend telling me before I had A that she (my friend) is a very different mom than she was before she had kids. What she meant was, things that she thought she would never say or do, she now does as a parent. At the time I could not relate but being a mom for these short 16 months has made me see how right (though sometimes painfully so) she was. Being the strong-willed child that A is, she has tested us countlessly on what we thought we would do as parents verses what we end up doing. I have begun to learn and implement the saying, "pick your battles" into my every day thoughts. At times it was (and is) hard for me to see mom's disciplining their kids "the right" way while I struggled to fight off what felt like the 10,000th tantrum of the day. It can be easy to question if what I'm doing as a mom is best or a complete and utter mess. So R, A, myself and God worked through the tantrums and miraculously they are much less common these days but the struggle to know what to do as a mom is still there. The doubts, the worries, the uncertainties...I guess that comes with learning how to parent.

One of the ways that R and I felt would be best to teach A how to control her temper at her age was to talk to her about it as if she understood what we were saying. The concept of leading by example in its simplest form. I questioned if we should be more firm (timeouts, talking in a more stern voice, ect) but through prayer we felt like for A this was the way to go. I continued to doubt if this was really going to work but then one afternoon about a month ago God reminded me that even though we don't know what we're doing as parents, He does!

A and I were playing on the floor and I got up to get something. When I turned back around A had her hands folded and had her head slightly bent. I asked her what she was doing and she looked up and with a big smile said "prayin." In these 16 months of parenting nothing, not one thing, has given me the joy that she gave me in that moment. Not only was it a gentle reminder that she is seeing and hearing what we do and say but it was a reminder that God is at work in our little girl.

So in the month to follow, A's tantrums have lessoned, her request to pray randomly throughout the day has increased and our amazement in God's abundant love continues to grow.