Hi, this is Annie here (Lula Mae's friend). This month's topic for Faithful Thoughts is how you show your love to your family. Okay, I admit this was my month to choose a topic and I guess I was inspired by Valentine's Day and the fact that I had a peaceful couple of weeks with my kids. Unfortunately, the past two weeks have been the complete opposite so I'm not feeling lovey-dovey about my children right now. Now I am thinking, "what WAS I thinking?" when I came up with this topic. So, mentally I am trying to recall happier times with my kids. Let's give this a shot.
For Valentine's Day I decided I was going to try to do something sweet and special this year, something that I wanted to repeat every year. I had all these warm and fuzzy images in my head of my kids and I sitting at the table making and cutting out red hearts and gluing them on white lacey paper. Then I had planned to pull aside one child at a time and ask them to tell me a few things they love about their siblings, their daddy, and me (though Daddy was suppose to do this part). So, we started out making the hearts and my warm lovey-dovey images of doing this soon turned to stress and panic, then hysteria because my 3 year old wanted to do this (the cutting) on his own and wouldn't let me help him, thus he wasn't making beautiful hearts which was quite upsetting to him. Then I find myself yelling and irritated, extremely irritated, and muttering to myself, "WHAT WAS I THINKING?" Not exactly the way I wanted to act while I am making cards telling my children I love them! :) Okay, so we did eventually get past that part. I pulled Katie aside and asked her to tell me what she loves about Zach ("he's cool" made me laugh), what she loves about Gracie, and what she loves about Daddy. I wrote these thoughts on the imperfect hearts we somehow still managed to create (although Katie's hearts were perfect, wonder where she gets this perfectionist trait from). I then pulled Zach aside and then just made some up for Gracie (she's only 1). Scott and I did one for each child, too. We each received our hearts on Valentine's Day night and I finally had the magic moment I had longed for...the looks on my children's faces when they heard, with delight, what each of us loved about each other. Now, it was worth it.
How do we show love on any average day? Unfortunately I worry that I'm not very good at this. I spend the majority of my day saying things like, "don't touch that, stop running in the house, go to time out, you don't say no to mommy"....well, you get the drift. I feel all sorts of mushy love for my children when I'm putting them to bed at night, though! Well, until they come out of their room for the billionth time needing something. I'm convinced these are the hard years...having three kids 4 1/2 years apart and at the age they are at now. Everyone tells me to just wait until they're teenagers. Thanks for the encouragement! Yeah, that will probably be harder emotionally, but physically, I'm dying here and could use all the encouragement I can get for the here and now, which quite frankly isn't ever enough.
I try to console myself that if God couldn't get Adam and Eve to obey then I shouldn't sweat it if I have issues with my kids. Kids need love and guidance and choices. God certainly gave Adam and Eve a choice, "you can eat from any of these other beautiful trees, but don't eat from this one!" Of course, they did exactly what they shouldn't do so why do I expect any different from my kids? The thing I'm trying to teach is that I'm your mother and I HAVE to love you, even when you are being a pain! But your friends do not have to love you like I do, so you need to make nicer choices or you're going to have a hard time out in the real world! Okay, what is that verse again? Love is patient, love is kind...oh yeah, 1 Corinthians 13:4.
So the past few weeks I have shown my children I love them by using my many teachable moments to instruct and reprimand, if need be. But simple acts of delighting in their pleasures, cheering them in their successes, sympathizing in their defeats, and (most importantly) showing them God's love for them are part of it too. Playing with them is big and it's not my favorite thing to do. Katie thinks of me as her playmate for the entire day. I remind her I gave her a brother and a sister to be her playmates, so leave me alone! No, not really. I do play with her and I believe her love language is quality time. She likes my attention, which is far too hard to get at times. We do things like pretending we are other people. She always tells me who I am suppose to be and then tells me what I said was wrong and then tells me what to say. Oh yes, this is fun! But then we scrapbook together and this is something I love. She has her notebooks, the pictures I give her that I'm not going to use, and stickers and she plugs along right with me. It's great fun and we have great conversation while we do it. I hope she'll never outgrow that. Actually, it will be a sad day when we don't play "pretend" anymore, too.
If you've never read the Love Languages book for your children I highly recommend it. I can already tell what my two older kids love languages are. It is helpful when you are dealing with your children in happy or frustrating circumstances.
For Zach, I think he feels most loved by us when we make a big deal over something he made at school. He's always very proud when we put his latest artwork on the refrigerator. He loves for us to build him up with positive words. You can just see him beam with pride when we put things on the fridge or when we say something to him about what a good boy he is, what he did well, etc.
Gracie is so young, I show her love by cheering her on as she's learning to walk, by playing with her, feeding her, cuddling with her, etc.
My husband...oh this one is tough. There is so much energy spent on the kids every day that by the time they're in bed my husband and I crash! Quite frankly, neither one of us puts enough effort into this, although he probably is better at this then I am. Date nights are a must, though not done often enough. I think we're both good about allowing each other to go do something away from the kids when we want, though I take this advantage far more often then he does. If I sat here and and tried to think of things, I'd come up with far more, but my brain cells have died this week so I'm not going to make any more attempts. What I will say here is that it is oh-so-important to carve out time with our husbands because I know they often times feel neglected (moms can too) once the children arrive. You have to nurture your marriage just as much as your children. If you ignore your spouse then what will you have in common with him once the kids are grown and gone? Let's encourage one another to make a special effort to carve time out with our spouses this month. And I will encourage you, also, to discover your children's love languages. Have a good month!
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