Yesterday, I was talking to a friend and I was telling her about this concept of not provoking my children to anger. I suppose when I hear the word provoke I summarize it as being sort of "bully-like". While that may be right in some ways, I think we can take it a step further. So I asked myself the question, "Am I living differently than I tell my children to live?" While I quickly answered "no" to that question something popped in my mind (thanks to the Lord's divine reminders: ). I replayed a scene of yesterday's events in my head and noticed something. I was telling my child to be patient with something that I myself was not being patient with. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But it's not! While I was not outwardly showing my impatience, I was somehow displaying it to my child. More than likely it was though my body language, eye contact, and/or facial expressions. What was the result of my impatience? A child who was impatient and angry! I provoked my child. I wasn't being a bully, I was just not modeling the one thing I was telling my child to do.
As you can imagine, todays task was to not provoke my children to anger. While I never really thought there was too much anger in our house, I did realize that it is a lot harder than it seems. In fact, I have already failed the test. Thankfully, I have a very forgiving and merciful God who has given me very sweet and forgiving children! This wasn't quite what I had in mind in doing "out of the ordinary" things for the Lord, but when it comes to serving Him, anything counts. I guess you can say that anything out of the ordinary for me is anything that requires me to place myself below others. What a humbling journey this can be.
No comments:
Post a Comment