Modeling Grace

For the umpteenth time that day, I heard the wailing begin.

With a sigh, I dried off my hands and headed towards the bedroom...dreading having to sort out what I thought for certain would be yet another sibling conflict. Something we've been having a LOT of lately!

Instead, the wailing child had merely bonked his chin on closet while getting dressed for bed.

My first response, I am ashamed to say, was to judge. If he hadn't been hopping around and being silly, he probably wouldn't have hurt himself in the first place.

Ouch.

Why can't I just merely comfort and console?! I winced as I realized that I often do not model grace for my children. Not only do they suffer because of my lack of compassion, but I have to ask myself whether this lack of grace be influencing some of the dynamics behind the recent surge in sibling rivalry?

Definitely something to think about.

I don't know why I struggle to receive and give grace...I suppose I could begin tracing back to my childhood and point to all the factors that might have influenced me, but honestly, the fact is that I do struggle with it. I think it would be much more helpful to just accept that truth and focus my energy on learning more about grace from this point on.

I was excited to see this post from Simple Mom in my inbox this morning. Maybe a good place to start (or return to) is by learning how to heap grace on myself. If I am not receiving or working out the grace in my own life, then I obviously won't be heaping it on my family, either! And oh, how we all need heaps of grace!

I typically struggle with knowing how to take care of myself...it was, in fact, one of the biggest factors in our having to leave Venezuela when we did. Years of not heaping grace on myself, not recognizing my limits, and not taking care of myself set me up for a spectacular crash that I'm still recovering from.

The funny thing is, though, while I remember those years with sorrow over my lack of grace, my children remember those same years with fondness as they focus on the good times. The special times we shared as a family and the fun things we did together...I'm so glad that grace is smoothing out the wrinkles in our family history.

I took the stress assessment test, by the way, and got a score of 220 which means..."Take care of yourself now. You have borderline high stress. Your chance of accident or illness related to your stress within two years is moderate." I guess that means I need to go heap some grace on myself today.