Mondays

Mondays are hardly ever great days in our household. The girls are coming off of Sunday, which is a very long day for us. We travel an hour to get to church, and then we eat lunch out because it is so far, and then it's an hour home. So the girls rarely get a decent afternoon nap, they go to bed early, and for some reason, they don't sleep in, but get up early on Monday. So there is usually lots of cranky, tired, squabbling children in the house....and one very frustrated, impatient mommy!
This morning, for instance, I heard the older two in their room talking before 6:30 this morning, and I immediately knew today was probably not going to be a good day. I was hanging out wash when my eldest pointed out to me that Alaina had pulled some flowers out of one of my pots. Not just the flower, but the whole plant. Now Alaina and I have been having frequent lessons in not pulling my flowers out, and this one just took the cake. So, I became angry, told her (not so calmly and definitely not in an inside voice) to leave my flowers alone, and then I disciplined her. She cried for a little while and then got over it and moved on to the next thing. And here I sit, almost an hour later and I am still stewing over the same thing.
I find this true a lot of times. My children misbehave, we deal with it, they move on, and I am still upset. And then I get even more upset with myself because I am holding a grudge against a toddler!
I am so thankful that children are resilient and forget the days of their younger years where their parents make plenty of mistakes. I would never want my girls to remember the day that their mom was upset with them for a whole morning because they pulled my flowers out. I mean, really, in the big picture, what do the flowers really matter? Not a whole lot.
I am just so thankful that God doesn't treat me that way. He never holds a grudge against me when I screw up, which is pretty often. And now that I have a blog to journal on, it is really humbling to see how much growing I have to do.
I know I need to just pray for the mercy, unconditonal love and discernment to know how to take care of a situation. Oftentimes I react in the moment and later regret how I handled it. Hindsight is 20/20. I am just so thankful that my girls have unconditional love for me and forget things so quickly. I think I need a little more toddler in me!!