When the girls were toddlers, the last day of school made me cry. It wasn’t leaving incredible teachers and new friendships that did it. Nope. I cried because I’d be at home for three months with two toddlers, and I wasn’t sure what to do with them.
My response to feeling out of control, out of my league, and out of my mind is to yell. Summer is that time of year when we’re together all the time, and it’s easy to lose our cool in the heat of the season.
Friends, I’ll talk to you about yelling as honestly as I can.
I yell at my kids.
It’s true, and I’m not proud of it. But since you’ve probably yelled at your kids too, we’re all in this together.
Disobedience, exhaustion, and annoyance are a few of the reasons I yell, but mostly it’s because I’m scared.
I’m scared that I won’t know how to handle every situation.
Summer means that a lot more issues pop up and, more often than not, I feel incompetent and incapable as a mom. My response to not knowing how to get the girls to quit complaining or fighting is to yell, “STOP!” Stop is my advice and solution. I just want them to stop because they’re driving me crazy.
I wish there was a universal book of best practices, a step-by-step tutorial on how to handle the “you-cut-my-sandwich-wrong” situation… but these resources don’t exist.
The truth is that I yell because I feel overwhelmed with trying to figure out how to handle each situation in the most God-centered way.
But it’s not just not my overwhelm that’s got me yelling.
I’m scared for the girls’ future.
Summer means that I see the girls more each day, and I’m reminded that my time left with them is fleeting. I don’t know what life has in store for them, so I assume that they’re heading to prison unless I correct every bad choice.
If I can’t control our girls now, what will happen when they’re teenagers? If they go off the rails, they’ll never go to college or get a job, then they’ll have to live in a basement we don’t have while I do their laundry.
As a control-freak, I wish there was a way that I could see their futures turn out okay, then I could quit micromanaging their lives.
The truth is that I yell because I’m scared that their future depends solely on how I parent today.
Yelling is clearly not the answer to my overwhelm and fear…but what’s a try-hard girl to do?
I don’t need to yell because God knows how to handle every situation that comes up.
God is the One in whom, by whom, and for whom all things hold together. Not only is He in control, He isn’t One for checklists and external compliance.
Even if I had a best-practices book, I wouldn’t be able to follow it. Parenting is an opportunity to be in relationship with Him—we can take all of our questions and fears to Him and work through them together.
This truth is good, but how do we put it into practice?
We can take two actions:
- Speak out loud, “Jesus help me.”
- Grant ourselves grace and remind ourselves that nothing about parenting is easy. Then, we can do the next right thing in love.
And when we fear for the future, there’s another truth to remember.
I don’t need to yell because God’s got the future all figured out.
God is the One with a plan and a purpose for our girls. He’s omniscient, so I don’t need to be.
Just like Adam and Eve, we want to taste the fruit of the tree, but that tree wasn’t meant for us to experience. We weren’t designed to carry the weight of knowing All The Things.
God protects us from ourselves by giving us only the information we need exactly when we need it. He’s good and gentle that way.
So in the middle of our future-oriented-freak-outs, what are common-sense steps we can take to remember that God is sovereign and all-knowing?
We can ask two questions:
- Do I believe that God is trustworthy with my kids?
- Do I understand that my security doesn’t lie in knowing All The Things but in knowing the One who does?
Find more common-sense strategies here.
Today, the last day of school still makes me cry, not out of fear for the summer, but because of the relationships and good times the girls have had.
Summer is teaching me that I don’t need to yell or live in fear because our God knows how to handle every situation and He knows what the future holds. Friends, our God is trustworthy… even when we lose our cool.
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