Yesterday afternoon I caught myself starting to be cranky at everyone. I informed the monkeys that we were wrapping up our projects and going to take a nap. I let them know that if we didn't, mom was going to get really cranky with them and that I didn't want to do that to them. This bit of information caused them to come willingly to nap. We all snuggled up so that everyone had a piece of mom. This is quite difficult to do with three. We read a couple chapters in The Wizard of Oz series and fell asleep. We woke (meaning me and my Amber girl) when we heard Grandma holler up the stairs to see if we were home. My Amber girl went to hug her Grandma and thank her for bringing us fruit and then came back to snuggle. We finally pulled ourselves out of bed to go and fix Daddy some dinner before he had to dash again. My Tiny girl refused to wake up. She'd open her eyes and snuggle back in.
This girl did not wake up until 630am this morning. I'm guessing she slept about 15 hours straight. And she didn't wake up all that easily. I knew it was going to be a challenging morning. She's my tempertamtrum girl and now she hasn't eaten in 15+ hours. I think she screamed and cried at every obstacle this morning. Then something fun would catch her eye and she'd be alright until the next challenge. It was frustrating to say the least.
I say all this to get to this...as I was driving to our first stop after dropping the girls at school, a war started over my thoughts. It was the most fascinating thing. It was like having four personalities. I had the one functioning and getting us where we needed to go safely. Then there was the one watching the war and being astounded that these two thoughts could be so petty as to fight over this when this personality knew the truth and wasn't going to stoop to their level. Then the two at war...
I hate my life.
No, you don't, you are abundantly blessed.
Right, I hate this situation.
No, this is just because of chemicals gone wrong in the body. You just need to stay steady.
Right,I hate being frustrated.
No,it's learning how to deal with difficult people in a Christian manner.
Right, I hate my life.
I finally had to tell them all to shut up because God was in control and I needed to get on with my day.
Not sure if any of you have had this experience. I'm just glad that I've gotten this far in my wisdom to know that it's not that I hate any of this. That it's time to lay it at the foot of the cross and move on to why God put me here, right now.
Then we went off to MOMS group where we're studying Esther with Beth Moore. Today's topic was meanness. How absolutely fitting to the war I just had this morning.
As I was listening to the video, I picked out a thought that people like to have an enemy. They like to have someone to hate. They like to be mean every once and a while. We're fallen, we sin, we crawl back to the foot of the cross. She also touched on the topic of power and how people are mean because they want to feel in power or they feel their power is being threatened or their power is being taken away.Which brought me to the conclusion, when you're doing a good thing for the glory of God you will be threatened. Depending on how big of an impact it is going to be will be told through all of the struggles you are facing. We need to stand firm through the meanness and keep lifting people up. Heap coals on their heads by not allowing their meanness shake your foundation. We can be part of the problem or part of the solution. We need to be the common people taking uncommon stands.
Take every thought captive and stop the meanness in you. Then, go and lift someone up today. Tiny asked me while we were eating lunch how we can pick ourselves up. She meant as in the car. I called it a God-moment.
