"Sweet, tender and accessible"

I cringed recently when dining at a friend's house. She told me she read my blog -- that doesn't make me cringe, but perhaps blush, and I'm not sure why -- and she was under the impression I was one of those moms who "had it together." I gasped, and quickly told her, "I am a train-wreck".

I think I have mentioned it here, most likely many times, that I am not a tidy person by any means. I am absolutely energized by cleanliness and orderliness, but I am lazy and disorganized and I lack the follow-through in keeping on top of things.

That, however, is not why I am a train-wreck. It is because I am incredibly impatient with my children. Incredibly.

I was in the grocery store recently with my children and their aunt who now lives with us. Noah was being jovial and playful and sat on the tub of ice cream I was going to buy "to help warm it up."

Now surely it was reasonable for me to ask him not to do that. But I snapped at him, sighed at the foolishness of me having to actually say, "don't sit on the ice cream" and in general was decidedly rude and bitter about the whole thing.

The sad thing was it didn't even occur to me I was being unfair until a woman rounded the corner into the aisle where we were standing and gave me a foul look, a look that said, "how dare you be so rude to a little boy! He's just a little boy, for crying out loud!"

I gulped. I was completely unaware how rude and unkind I was being until I got that Look from a stranger. It made me wonder, if that rudeness came so naturally and unnoticed to me, how often am I doing that without correcting myself, without even noticing?

I have become increasingly aware of my negative attitude toward my children. Just a few weeks ago in Nova Scotia I was generously given a ticket to a woman's prayer breakfast where the priest was talking about the Address to Women at the close of the Second Vatican Council. The whole text is really moving.

I was particularly struck by the following words, though:

"Women, you do know how to make truth
sweet, tender and accessible; 

make it your task

 to bring the spirit of this council into institutions, schools, homes and daily life."

The main speaker commented that when she is straying from really loving God and her family, it creeps in initially by complaint, negativity, bitterness and resentment. The words about making truth "sweet, tender and accessible," such warm and womanly virtues, fly out the window.

It was as though she was reading my mind. 

How much destruction am I causing when that negativity is directed towards my own children?

I love them so much, and I hope they know it. In fact I am pretty certain they do -- I tell them I love them over and over, I kiss and hug them, I try and make time to just play with them.

But I would be contributing so much more to our family's peace if I just stopped seeing their needs as inconveniences, if I smiled at them even when I felt otherwise tired, if I showed them my   'best side' all the time, because they deserve it.

Just this evening I read this beautiful, challenging post by Elizabeth Foss:

Children aren’t an interruption of our work. 

They are the reason we work. 

If we are so absorbed in our own world 

that our children are a nuisance, 

we’ve let pride have its way with our lives.

I pray that I will have a heart to love them for who they truly are, 

and eyes to see the world in the same innocent and delighted way that they do.