My six year old son would not stop doing what I asked him not to do. When I asked him why, he grinned and said that he was testing me. He couldn’t tell me why he was doing this.

I know kids test. They do it so well, and they seem to enjoy pushing the reactor button in their moms.

My son strikes my grumpy, grouchy button on target every time. He acts out when he doesn’t want to do his school work. We home school and we battle all day. It’s exhausting.

It’s not easy being a mom. It’s not easy doing the right thing for our family when there is so much stress involved. It’s amazing what we do. Day in and day out we serve. Sometimes nobody sees what we do. Some days are long and lonely.   Moms we are amazing.

Some of the things I tell myself before I get out of bed in the mornings are:

I’m going to have a good day today no matter what. I’m not going to let the freezing cold weather get me down. I will not get angry if my son chooses to be silly and doesn’t get his school work done. I’m going to stay calm when my four year old daughter deliberately does the opposite of what I tell her to do. I am going to keep my grumpy button turned off.

But most days I will say something like this:

My morning was nuts and it certainly wasn’t a good one.  My emotions were messy and I was so frustrated. I wasn’t a patient or kind momma today when my two little monsters tested me in every way. My grumpy button turned on.

Isn’t this how our days usually go Moms? We set our mind on having a successful day with our attitude, and then when the things we had planned for quickly fall apart, we crash into a sea filled with grouchy emotions.

Why are some days easier to roll with the challenges than others?

Why do we feel so bad about ourselves when mess up?

Could it be that we let our good and bad days define us?

I don’t feel like an amazing mom all the time.

But I am an amazing mom and so are you.   We just don’t always get it right. We are going to stumble and fall flat on our face from time to time.

There is a choice you and I can make for ourselves when we trip. We can be grumpy, insecure and doubt ourselves, or we can stand with confidence that our mighty God created us to be strong, upright, loving, and brave.

We belong to an amazing God who created us to be amazing too.

I will have good moments parenting and I will have bad moments. I have to remind myself every day that these moments do not define me. Only God truly can judge me because He knows me better than I know myself. He loves me unconditionally too. I want to love myself like God loves me and this is not easy.

The truth be told, if I learn to be easy on myself, I will have less buttons for the kids to push. How this works will have to be discussed in another post sometime.

Thanks for coming by and please feel free to comment.