Here is the second part for you today:
My children fight with each other. What's wrong with me?
I know, I know. I, too, have read the home school magazine articles about families that love each other all the time and never fight. I've even talked to a family that said this was the case in their home. Mums, they just aren't being honest with us! Or else they aren't aware of what their children are doing when the parents aren't within eve or earshot.
We can have a zero tolerance of unloving behaviour toward one another. This means that if we hear the children bickering, name calling, etc. or see them beating the stuffing's out of each other, we can put a stop to it, referee the difficulty, and insist that they ask forgiveness of each other. We can instruct them in kindness, selflessness, and serving others before they serve themselves.
However, we can't keep them from initially getting into squabbles. Our children have sinful natures and will sometimes (many times?) choose to act in wrong ways. Each one of them has a free will of his own, just as we adults do, and sometimes they blow it, just as we do. The difference is, by the time we reach adulthood, hopefully we have learned how to settle differences more calmly, and hopefully we are more deferent to the desires of others. Our goal is to train our children in being loving and kind to others. It takes persistence and consistency. And sometimes we will feel like giving up, or just won't feel like dealing with it right then. Determine to do your best at dealing with the squabbles, but don't beat up on yourself if you aren't 100% consistent. None of us are 100% consistent. Over all, they will still learn to behave rightly.
I can't get organized.
Every year millions of dollars are spent on self-help books and closet organizers by women with this guilt trip. I suspect that the majority of us are not "Cleanies" by nature. How we envy those who do have a gift for organization and a forever-neat house! They are the exception, not the rule, ladies!
Let's be realistic. Before you had children, your house was cleaner than it is now. That's because there were less people in it to help dirty it up. When you began home schooling, the house took another slide. It's about priorities and the time available. It's hard to teach the children for several hours a day, and still get all the cleaning done that you used to do in those same several hours. Get the children to help as much as they are able but expect the house to be somewhat shabbier than it used to be.
It is a good thing to be disciplined, orderly, and neat. We shouldn't just throw up our hands in defeat and quit trying. We do want to teach our children to be orderly, and model it for them. But sometimes our standards are ridiculously high, and very often we are basing those standards on how we perceive some other person's neatness to be, or on a “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine, rather than on what God would have of us.
I don't cook wonderful meals.
We try to follow the old "Four Basic Food Groups that I learned as a child, try to get enough fibre, and don't worry a whole lot about whether the food is fancy anymore.
Don't let food obsessers lay false guilt upon you. Eating healthy foods can become a god. However, if God is speaking to you about getting eating habits in order, neither should you brush Him off and automatically assume it is false guilt. The watchword is balance.
In summary.
So, how do we deal with guilt? The first thing we need to do is ascertain where the guilt is coming from. Is it conviction from the Holy Spirit that we have sin in our lives? If so, we need to repent, and then leave it at the cross of Jesus. Once a sin has been repented of, it is washed away, and any guilt attached to it from that point on is a false guilt. If the sin comes up again, we can repent again, determine to deal with it until we have a complete victory, and look to the Lord to help us conquer it. "Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ . . . ” (2 Corinthians 2:14).
Most of the time, when we feel guilty about our mothering skills, it is an exalted, idealized notion in our own minds of how we should be, rather than a realistic picture of how we can be. Many times the unattainable standard of perfection that we set for ourselves has nothing to do with holiness verses sin. It’s just an idea that we have, and something that the Lord is not expecting of us. We need to discern the difference between our own ideas and God's standard for us.
We are not alone in the guilt battle. I am speaking to myself, sisters, as much as to any of you. There is comfort in understanding that we all struggle with this problem. Not one of us is a "freak" because we suffer with guilt.
Jesus has enough mercy, grace, and all-sufficiency in Himself to more than make up for our parenting mistakes. If we humble ourselves enough to ask our children to forgive us when we err against them, they will forgive. If we pray diligently for them to grow up right in the Lord, He will hear our prayers and faithfully answer. His love covers a multitude of our sins, weaknesses, and failings.
May Jesus give us grace to go on in Him, be the best mums we can be, and leave the results in His hands.
© 2002 by Lee Ann Rubsam. All rights reserved.