Ephesians 6:14 "So stand ready, with truth as a belt tight around your waist, with righteousness as your breastplate..."
Transparency. A difficult thing for me. I have felt convicted to work on this. I question my integrity if I am not the same to everyone. I like for things to look like everything is alright. But I am called to be truthful in every area of my life. Is this difficult for anyone else? I like when things are good with my kids, in my marriage, or even with how I am doing emotionally. But that is tough. I pray for maturity with integrity.
Yesterday was my birthday. It was hard to have a birthday away from home. We got pizza for dinner and then I went to a movie with my neighbor. I didn't realize how much I needed the time away from the kids. I tend to be a martyr with my time. I silently suffer until it is too late and I am tired and frustrated. I don't accept Dan's offers to get out for the evening because I feel like I have to be home to make sure everything is okay. And so this begins my confession of needing to work on being truthful. God calls me to honest and authentic. It is harder to be this way when I am away from home. But I have complete faith that I can do much better with putting the belt of truth around me to keep Satan's temptations out.
The other area that I want to be transparent about involves the children. I just want to encourage all of you parents out there who struggle with raising children. It is not easy! We are still following our new strategies, but there are setbacks. We do take a few steps back, a few steps forward, and then a few more steps back again. Our beach trip was awesome....but there were some snags along the way with the kids. It seems like little by little we have let up on consistency with the kids only to find that old behaviors creep back. And Satan loves to feast on these moments. The kids were just plain hyper....probably due to excitement from the trip. But they were tough and we realized quickly that we need to tighten up again..."tomato stake." So that is what we did on my birthday. Sweet, dear little Chloe has suddenly figured out the joys of irritating mommy and daddy while throwing tantrums. I mean, blood curdling screams when she doesn't get her own way. Now we have added a third kid to "tomato stake." I just wanted you all to know that even though we are thriving here and enjoying our trips, we still stumble and we still fall, quite often. So we choose to plug away with our kids and choose to pray for God to strengthen our abilities to fight spiritual warfare as it comes.
Keep plugging away! Sometimes I get so discouraged - I wonder if we're doing it "right". There seems to be a lot of one step forward two steps back (at least in feeling), but I really feel like we're making forward progress - which you seem to be making as well. I guess it's a good thing because it definitely sends me to my knees! Right now I'm really having to steak Ben - pray for us:).
ReplyDeleteOh, and Happy be-lated birthday!