What makes parenting hard? Kids.

I love being a mom, but sometimes I think I’d be much better at it if it weren’t for all these kids.  Imagine how clean I could keep the house!  I could take all the time I wanted to prepare an amazing dinner without having to stop in the middle to referee arguments about who is stronger- Spiderman or Iron Man.  If these kids weren’t always underfoot I might actually fill in their baby books or decorate a color-coordinated nursery.  How great would that be?

But that’s not how it works.  All the tasks I have to accomplish must be done with my precious kids running around my ankles.  While this makes every task take longer, it also allows me a thousand opportunities a day to model patience and love for them.  I could probably make a more delicious dinner if I didn’t try to include the four year-old in mixing and measuring, but I also would have lost the opportunity to teach him some important life skills, like the difference between sugar and salt.

As parents, we wish we could stop time to deal with frustrations in exactly the right way.  We wish we could put off the mundane tasks of life so we could focus on making fun memories with our kids.  Instead, we learn to model the desire of Jesus that says, “let the children come to me” as we live our lives with an audience of little eyes and ears observing our every move.  It may not be easy, but it sure does keep us humble