they draw me smiling

(photo credit: Sarah Lewis)

---

I’m not the Super Fun Mom.

I am not, in fact, a super smily mom.

I’m super sensitive, easily overwhelmed, and have, in the last couple of years, been prone to depression and anxiety in ways I haven’t dealt with since before my oldest was born. I am pretty much winging it here.

I pray a lot.

I try really hard.

And a lot of times, I’m still just not that good at it.

My target is always “calm, compassionate, consistent.” But I fall short of that all. the. time. I’m forever apologizing to my kids.

My oldest gets the brunt of this. Jenna’s amazing and kind and lovely. She’s also so much like me. Because we’re so similar, her tendencies irritate me much more quickly than, say, her little sister. (Katherine is so very much like her dad, and he tends to have just a little less patience for her, not so surprisingly.) So I frequently find myself examining my own heart (unfortunately after I’ve acted) and finding my selfishness and irritability hurt my sweet girl. Again. So… another chance to model apology! Hooray!

It’s okay. God is making me and my kids into the people He wants us to be. I’m growing and stuff. (Yay.) But sometimes I’m discouraged by how hard it is to be the mama I want to be.

---

You know where I’m finding grace in this fight?

The girls’ artwork.

They’re forever drawing us, or random representations of us. (“Look, mom! We’re all fairies!” …or jack-o-lanterns, caterpillars, butterflies, flowers, or cats.) My life is a constant fight to figure out which drawings are going to be important and which I can bury in the trash ASAP, which sounds awful, but we’re talking dozens some days. It’s a lot of paper, and I can’t save or display it all.

And in every single picture they draw that contains me?

I’m smiling.

(This isn’t the only way they know how to draw faces. They draw mad people. Just not mad people in our family.) 

This is so encouraging to my heart. I’m praying this is what they remember. That, rather than all the times I screw up (which seem so prevalent to me), they see that I love them and they delight me. That they look back and see the lovely.

I’m praying that His grace covers my (myriad) mistakes.

---

This post is part of the write31days challenge… I’m trying to post every day in October. Or, you know, lots of days in October. The rest of the posts can be found here.