I've struggled for a long time now trying to find the words to put to paper. So here it goes...
Parenting trauma is an ever challenging roller coaster ride of emotions and experiences. Storms I never envisioned we'd have to walk through have felt like an eternal recycling of weather patterns on our home. We feel constantly pushed to the brink of our sanity. Towards the end of last year I really felt God tugging at the strings in my heart and pushing me to grow deeper in my relationship with him in ALL areas of my life. He's not content to have just a corner of my heart, he wants all of it.
FaiLuRe...this is a word I'm well acquainted with. And it's exactly what Satan wants me to believe about myself. I've failed at connecting...failed at my responses...failed in extending grace..."you're a failure and you'll never succeed at being a good mom." These are the words my heart tends to focus on and many times I allow the devil to succeed in his quest in beating me down.
It's hard not to look at this photo and feel like I failed our way through Disney in how I responded to things. I feel this is a truly honest representation of our trip to Disney last year. I had every intention of using it as our Christmas card photo for 2019, I'm all about being real. So here it is, the Deitrick Christmas card photo...a month late. We really had a wonderful time and just recently we were reflecting back on our memories and enjoyed reliving...most...of our trip. (There may have been a time or two when our strong-willed middle pushed all the adults to that brink of sanity I talked about earlier.) The reality is that I can look back through many photographs and remember the moments around it that no one else knows about and see them as failures. All those, I-should-have-moments, when I "should have" responded with love and grace and yet I failed miserably. It's a spiral of emotions that often lands me in a really dark place.
I tend to be the "sermon giver" in our home. (I know that's a shocker to those that know me.) Many times in my "sermons" I feel God gently telling me I should take my own words to heart. One of the things that has amazed me about being a parent is how closely it mirrors our relationship with Christ. As parents we want what's best for our children...so does God. As parents we want our children to be good, honest, and possess good character...so does God. We don't want our children to focus on their failures but to learn from them and use them as stepping stones through life. And so God didn't create my life to dwell on the failures and the darkness. Scripture so often talks about Christ bringing us out of the darkness and being a light. God wants our lives to be full of his goodness and his joy.
I think my focus for my joy has been focused on the wrong things. "Well I'll be joyful when my kids can listen and be good because then I know I'm doing my job well." HA! They are little people who, by nature, are going to test the limits and they're in a stage of learning and building character. This is an impossible task to base my joy on and puts an insurmountable burden of pressure on my kids, especially kids that come from trauma. That burden of failure I feel will never go away if this is my attitude. Instead God asks me to step into his light, to fill my life with joy, and to praise him regardless of the storm. God DID NOT give us the task of raising these boys because we had what it took. He gave us this task because we were inadequate and he wants to meet our every need. This is why it's so important for us to immerse ourselves in Christ through devotions, prayer, and church life.
Prayer is one of the areas of my life that I've never been great at. I recently talked to someone who challenged me to pray the scriptures for my children. She said she believes it made all the difference in her children's lives. She pointed me towards this book which has several versions for whatever stage your children may be in. I haven't finished reading through it yet but I'm very much looking forward to diving into the nitty gritty (especially that chapter on self-control). Praying for my children not only saturates their young lives with God, but it also provides me with the opportunity to fully trust God with their lives. When I worry about how they're behaving at school, I can place their day in God's hands. The simple reality is that I cannot do a thing to make my children make good choices or be good people. They have to have the desire for that in their hearts. I need to trust in what God CAN do.
I firmly believe in spiritual warfare and the impact it can have on our lives. The devil doesn't want to see us happy or growing spiritually so he'll attack any way that he can. I'm learning that one of his favorite times to attack is right before church on Sundays. And I'm learning that I need to be prepared for his attacks and have my arsenal of prayer ready. This is why it's so important for us to be in tune with God's word and our prayer life. We need to be prepared for the battle that rages around us on a daily basis.
I bought something recently that had this saying on it and my boys know it well. If we spend our lives focusing on the failures, our mentality will be to always go down that dark path of defeat. If we spend our lives with an attitude of effort and focusing on the goodness of God, then our lives become the art of worship. How can my life be a reflection of Christ? I can't make my children follow Christ, be good people, or always make the right choice, but I can lead by example. I can show them the beauty in giving my life fully to Christ and living for a God who sees past my failures to the person he created me to be.
"...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith"
Hebrews 12: 1-3
