A Good Reminder…

I just read this and feel like I could’ve written it!  I’ve recently been wondering a lot about childishness v. foolishness and what Jesus was like as a baby/toddler.  And I’m realizing that most of what the boys do to “annoy” me or “be naughty” is really just them being kids…not them being sinful or needing correction.  They do a lot that needs correction and training…don’t get me wrong!  But it’s a good reminder…

Sanctifying Motherhood by Brooke McGlothlin

http://www.themobsociety.com/2011/05/sanctifying-motherhood/

I saw the look in his eyes and it cut me to the heart.

LB, my 3 year old I often affectionately call my “wild thing,” was being… a three year old boy. Such a three year old boy, in fact, that I was teetering on the edge of sanity, clinging to the end of a rapidly fraying rope.

I yelled in exasperation. I saw my reaction mirrored in his precious face and it made me want to weep – what he saw in his mother was not love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control… what he saw and heard in me was irritation, anger, pride (because wasn’t what I was doing more important than tending to his three-year-old-ness at that moment?), impatience, harshness. The reflection wasn’t pretty.

Lately I have found myself pondering what motherhood was like for Jesus’ mother Mary. This young girl who was half my age was raising God in flesh. She sat with the One who had spoken the universe into being, her soft cheek pressed next to his chubby one, and said slowly and deliberately, “liiiggghhhhttt – can you say, ‘light?’”

In this fascinating parent-child relationship, He was the one who had created her, she was the one who had carried Him. He was the spotless one – she was a normal human being who wrestled with impatience and frustration like the rest of us.

What was Jesus like when He was three years old? Did His eyes sparkle with playfulness, did He sometimes fail to sit still, to use an ‘inside voice,’ to control the urge to move? Did He follow her about the house, constantly underfoot, constantly hanging on her robe, constantly… there? He was never disobedient, of course – but He, in His perfect humanity, was three once, too. Did Mary lose her patience when His noise was so noisy, His energy so energetic?

You see, as I parent, I am training my children to know what is right and wrong, yes. I want them to love what is good and hate what is evil, I want to guide them in the path of righteousness. But more and more I find that I am the often the object of sanctification in this relationship – often they are not being sinful, they are being children. I am the one who is in the wrong. I am the one seeking forgiveness. I am the one who has failed to rein in my tongue and temper and frustration.

Parenting is an exhausting exercise in sanctification. But we serve a God whose grace is greater than our sin – whose love can cover over it all. Girls, our kids see us on our ugly days – when we see our ugliness reflected in those precious eyes, it’s time to look into His. It’s time to ask Him to not only show us how to train our children in the way they should go, but also to conform us this day more into the image of His dear Son. And may the reflection we see in those eyes each day look more and more like Jesus as time goes by.