Some days, I would just love it if I could have a do over. Sometimes it seems like things just don’t go right from the start and I’m ready to crawl back in my bed and other days, the day starts out fine and then goes downhill later. Either way, the day leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And a lot of times, my bad days leave me feeling like a bad mom. Children require a lot of patience and I mean A LOT. When things aren’t going great, my patience reservoir is already severely depleted so it doesn’t take much for me to lose my cool. Thankfully, in those moments, I usually am able to catch myself and even though my son doesn’t really understand what an apology is, I always apologize for losing my temper with him.
I know that my sinful flesh will cause me to lose my temper even more in the future, but it is so important that I try to keep a tighter rein in how I react to my emotions. An important lesson that I want to teach my son is that it is okay to feel emotions, but we need to act on those emotions appropriately. Teaching someone how to process and act on their emotions is no easy task. The lesson starts with me though as children watch their parents. James tells us in James 3:6 (NIV):
“The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set in fire by hell.”
Controlling our tongues and in turn our actions is an extremely important lesson that I want to teach my kids. No, not every day is Perfect and some days I may not have a lot of patience, but I can control how I react and the words that I allow to come out of my mouth.
