Grace is for Mamas

I had a really bad day on Monday.  It was the first day of my period (first one since my recent miscarriage), so I was already very on edge.

C and I had a good morning, baking pumpkin bread and starting laundry, and a good lunchtime and early afternoon, playing outside with leaves.

Then we came inside. C needed to nap. I nursed her at the keyboard and she never quite fell asleep enough for me to put her down. She wiggled and wanted to pat me.  I was feeling very touched out. I needed a physical and mental break from her, and I didn't get it.

The late afternoon was pretty rough on both of us. I feeling tired by then, but couldn't sit down without C wanting to climb on me or nurse.  The clutter in my house was another irritant, and since I had to be up anyway, I felt compelled to start cleaning. 

But C didn't want me to clean.  C wanted to play.  She wanted a snack.  Fine.  But, being a two year old who didn't get her nap, she started losing it over every. little. thing.  And when she wasn't screeching, she was getting into something, hindering and undoing my cleaning progress.  I quickly lost patience with her.

I have lots of gentle, positive discipline tools in my toolbox.  I could have involved her in my cleaning efforts and made it a game.  I could have redirected her away from the offlimits things to something truly appealing.  I could have suggested we sit and read a book together to fill her cup with the attention she was clearly asking for.  I could have turned to playful parenting and make us both laugh and smile and reset the rapidly souring mood.  I could have declared that we both needed a break and vegged out with her in front of a movie.  I could have taken us back outside, or on a ride to visit a store or a relative. 

I forgot and/or chose not to use any of those tools.  Instead, I got more and more locked in to what I was doing.  I was seeing red and yelling a lot.  I did some redirection, but with an angry voice and forceful hands.  I also had punitive vindictive thoughts, such as "Why should I turn this into a fun moment when she is giving me such a hard time?!?"


Anger kept building. 

I started dinner.  Thoughtlessly, I chose one of the more involved recipes on my week's meal plan, one that involved peeling potates and dicing onions.

C persisted in trying to get my attention.  When she wouldn't stop turning off the dishwasher I'd just started and then switched to pulling things out of the drawers, I got fed up.  I told her since she couldn't control herself, I would help her by putting her some place where she couldn't get to the dishwasher.  I hauled her to her room and shut the door on her, leaving her screaming to be let out. I finished peeling the potatoes before returning to open the door.

When I let her out I gave her a little speech about why she had been in there and then gave her a perfunctory hug. 

That sort of reset things for a while but all too soon we were right back where we started.

Not too much later I was putting away the laundry in my bedroom.  When I had my back turned, she started pulling the clothes I had just put away out of the drawers.  I was so angry I felt like I was going to lose control and physically hurt her. I carried her quickly to her bedroom, yelling all the while.  I slammed the door behind her again (with her screaming again, of course).  I needed to get away from her to keep her safe and calm myself down.

Her continued wailing behind the door broke my heart and infuriated me all at the same time.  I flung the door open and grabbed her into a tight hug, fearing that if I let her go I would really hurt her.  She clung to me.  In my arms she felt so small, so scared.  In so many ways still just a baby.  My intense anger melted away, but the irritation remained.

I called DH and asked him to hurry home because things weren't going well.  Somehow C and I managed to survive until Daddy came to the rescue with a fresh batch of patience and energy.

So, does this bad day mean that positive discipline/grace-based discipline (GBD for short) is an idealistic theory that doesn't work in real life?

Not at all. 

I can think of so many extenuating factors that contributed to this situation. C is teething 2 year molars and they hurt her quite a bit.  On top of that, with Halloween and family birthdays, I've been letting C have dairy recently, "as a treat."  She's intolerant to it and it makes her feel bad: itchy skin, upset tummy, poor sleep which all gives her a resultant shorter fuse.  Finally, there had been too much time between lunch and dinner and C didn't have much of a snack, so she (and probably I as well) had low blood sugar on top of everything. C is an extrovert, and a cold had kept us home alone for the past week or so. She was asking for my attention and to connect with me, and I didn't give it, partly out of spite.  Did I mention I'm hormonal/PMSing/grieving? 

So much of GBD is about being proactive, setting up our children (and ourselves) for success. 

This is a day when I was reactive.  I became the scary, shaming parent I am trying so hard not to be.  I really blew it. 

I'm so grateful grace is for mamas too.



I told this whole sad story to DH when he got home, wondering aloud if I am cut out for this, and he said, "You're a wonderful mother, everyone has bad days." He shows me grace.

As I told the story to him, I realized I owed C an apology.  I got down on her level and said I was sorry for losing control and scaring her.  She gave me a hug. She shows me grace. 

Out of the ashes of that bad day, there are a few positive things: I was able to model humility and how to apologize to C. I've renewed my efforts to keep C and me on a dairy-free diet. I'm also working on building more structure into our days for both our sakes.


Not the first time and not the last time we will need to live out the verse our family chose as a parenting theme verse at C's baby dedication:

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32

Grace in our Trauma

Pookaloo was hit by a van on Saturday, May 1st. There were scary moments when we didn't know how bad it was. She turned blue and couldn't keep her eyes open on the way to the hospital, and once we got there she was very still. X-rays and a CT scan showed pulmonary contusions and pelvic fractures.

PRAISE GOD that by some miracle she is ok. Her lungs are already healed, and she has begun to crawl and even walk again.



Trauma comes with so many emotions.

Fear. Guilt. Relief. Joy.


It happened so fast and now she's well on the road to recovery but our emotions are still raw, throbbing, bleeding and demanding care and attention. How odd that the ordinary rhythms of the world and daily march forward when I want to hit pause and rewind until I've processed it all.


Fear. We almost lost her. The line between alive and dead is so thin. We are so vulnerable and what we think is ours could be snatched away in a moment. A moment of inattention led to this result and I want to swear eternal vigilance, but I know that there will be more moments of inattention because I am only human. I'm not ultimately in control, I don't have the power over life or death.

Guilt. I was there and had just put her down and turned my back to do something I thought was important. What could be more important than keeping my precious daughter safe? Now in the aftermath, she needs so much from me and I am starting to feel drained and resentful and then I feel guilty about that.

Relief, Joy and Gratitude. She's alive! She's healing rapidly! She's thriving! I still get to be her mama! God saved her! God healed/is healing her! Every smile, every giggle, every cuddle overwhelms me with joy that leaks out of my eyes.


Pookaloo has to process the trauma too. How scared and confused she must have been. How frustrated she is now to be able to walk only slowly with a limp, when before this she was running, jumping, climbing.


God has continually extended grace to me in this situation. A warm chaplain who immediately offered absolution for the guilt I expressed. A handmade blanket made by an anonymous donor through Project Linus that comforted Pookaloo in the ER. A message of hope and forgiveness at Bible study. An encouraging word from a dear aunt who was in a similar situation many years ago.

Grace is abounding. I need only to continually receive God's grace for myself and extend it to Pookaloo as we both are extra fragile and healing.

Reading Reflections: Ragamuffin Gospel -- Chapter One (Part 1)

I received one of my books in the mail. Hooray! I'm starting to wonder where the others are ... but that's not the point of this post.

Today, I'd like to share some nuggets from Chapter One of Ragamuffin, titled "Something is Radically Wrong" and respond to them.

Put bluntly: the American Church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice ... Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love.

When I was in college I wrote a short story involving a statue of hands with keys dangling keys of salvation tauntingly just out of reach of grasping desperate fingers in an effort to express this very sense of "Something is Radically Wrong." I was one of those living in the house of fear, who heard about grace my whole life but didn't see it lived out or feel it in my soul. The underlying message of many sermons seemed to me to be, "By grace you have been saved ... now hurry up and get holy enough to deserve it."

As Manning goes on to say,

... "do-it-yourself" spirituality is the American fashion ... Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as it if its only personal discipline and self-denial that will mold the pefect me. The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time.

Fully accepting grace as truly God's unmerited favor that we didn't earn in the first place and can't possibly work hard enough to keep is absolutely freeing. Yet how many of us are still a little afraid of grace, afraid that if we emphasize it too much that we are offering others and ourselves a license to sin? We ask with Paul's rhetorical questioners, "What shall we say then, shall we go on sinning that grace may increase?" Too, who wants to admit that they are utterly broken, utterly helpless, utterly in need of a Savior? But that is the only way to true freedom. Blessed are the poor in spirit (those who acknowledge their spiritual poverty).

I love this passage of Manning's:

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes.

I believe and I doubt,
I hope and get discouraged,
I love and I hate,
I feel bad about feeling good,
I feel guilty about not feeling guilty.
I am trusting and suspicious.
I am honest and I still play games

...

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admiting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, "A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God."

Healing Tears and Forgiveness

Last night God nudged me in a new direction.

I had read an article on the healing power of tears. Some studies have shown that tears carry stress-chemicals out of the body, perhaps explaining why one sometimes feels refreshed and cleansed after a good cry.

God confronted me with some information about myself. It's actually hard for me to cry, and I tend to be uncomfortable around others when they are crying. Through my early childhood experiences, I learned to be ashamed of crying, to see crying as a weakness that is both childish and foolish. Even now as an adult, I mistakenly have thought that tears are irrational and the result of wrong thinking, inevitable sometimes, but regrettable and to be avoided.

That was wrong. Tears are a valid expression of overwhelming emotion. By suppressing my tears, I have cut myself off from a full experience of life's pain but also it's pleasure. I have lied to myself that what hurt me no longer hurts, but by rushing past my hurt, I have stunted the healing process and numbed myself to a deeper experience of joy as well.

Last night I thought about many of the slings and arrows of my past. Times when I was told to stop crying lest the person give me something to cry about. Names I was called and labels I was given at home and at school that wounded my spirit. I saw them in a new light. Those things DID hurt, and it's okay to acknowledge that and feel the full force of the hurt. I pictured God comforting me, affirming his understanding of the hurt and fully accepting me as I began to cry about it.

And then a surprise: an overwhelming desire to offer forgiveness for each of the hurts, whether the perpetrator was a family member, schoolmate or even myself. I recognized that they didn't fully understand what they were doing, and had their own set of hurts that they were reacting against, and that my wrongs against others have been equally bad if not worse.

I think I had misunderstood forgiveness in the past. Even though intellectually I thought I understood forgiveness, somehow I operated as though forgiveness equaled denial of the wrong and suppression of the emotions caused by the wrong.

I slept very well last night, feeling much lighter without the burden of denied hurts.