Cultivate a Soft Answer

I suck as a person and a mother.  So this transition as a mother is harder than I thought it was going to be.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE these kids.  They are so adorable and I often find myself telling Reeve I am going to eat his face or sneaking Millie in another toy that she does not need.  They def make my days brighter and I love all the trips to the pool, splash park, library, wal-mart, and so on.  We pray everyday to make them a member of our forever family. I am not complaining about them. It is more me as a person.

Tonight while I was at Young Women's (that is a program in our church for girls ages 12-18) we were talking about Personal Progress ( a program that the girls do to develop themselves and they have to do projects under certain values). We were discussing something that the young women can do with their mother and how it can be a really neat experience.  I was looking around at the young women with their mothers and could see the love that existed between them.

Then it made me think of my mother.   I LOVE my mother.  I don't know if love is strong enough word. She is one of my best friends. I talk to her probably a thousand times a day. Anytime she comes to visit me or I go to visit her I count down the days and I relish very day I am with her. My dream is for her to live near me. There is nothing that I can not talk to her about. She is one of my greatest blessings in life.

I want that with my daughter. I try to think what did my mother do to make me feel loved, to make me feel like I could come to her with anything. I knew growing up that I had one of the coolest mothers ever, even though we make fun of her quite a bit. I want that with Millie. I want her to think of me and have the warm feelings that I have for my mother.

However, part of me feels like maybe I am not creating an environment to cultivate that. I remember one family home evening my mother read an article that was titled "Cultivating a Soft Answer." She talked to us about that we are too loud, and yell too much, and how dramatic we are, and how we need to "cultivate a soft answer" Us being Us just laughed at her and rolled our eyes.  We still make fun of her to this day about "cultivating a soft Answer".

However now that I am mother. I am seeing that their is something to this.  I am def to quick to yell, grit my teeth, jump on my kids cases, and have found that I am strict mother.  I will see Millie yelling a Reeve and think "OMG she is imitating me. Do I really sound like that to her?" And in this case imitation is not the best form of flattery. It is def a mirror.

So why am I writing this?  Why am I boring you with these details?  I wanted to put it out there in the universe and to keep myself accountable. I wanted this post to serve as a reminder to let go and LOVE my kids instead of trying to teach all day long.  If I am trying to teach I need to remember that the great teacher of all (Jesus) did not teach in anger.

so here is to cultivating a soft answer (in my whisper voice)