What happens when the children grow up and still live at home?
1. They chastise me for forgetting to wash pans.
2. They ask me if I am going to clean up my cookie-making mess.
3. They tell me they TOLD me a MILLION times not to dry their work-out clothes in the dryer....
4. They hog the washer and dryer.
5. They hog the bathrooms.
6. They have strong opinions about how things should be done.
7. They know more than I do about the small children, and what their boundaries should be.
And so on.....
So....here I am. I love my grown children. The teenagers and the young twenty-somethings. So what do I do? I have had a HUGE revelation. HUGE. I have realized how it feels to be chastised for something, to be reminded of something, to be in "trouble" for something. I have discovered the first reaction is to argue, or defend. I have found out exactly how they feel when I have to remind them of things!!! All I can think of is the verse, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy..."
Now, don't get me wrong. The older ones are not disrespectful or rude. They are "just sayin'..." When there are so many people of so many ages living in one house, there has to be humility. Part of me wants to stamp my feet and say, "I am the MOTHER! I will NOT stand for this! I am the BOSS!"....but.....in humility one can obtain wisdom. And wisdom knows how to keep peace, how to deal with things gently. Because my goal is not to be the boss, or to have things my own way. No, it is to have it good here in our home, to live with eternity in view.
So the next time one of them says, "Mom, how come you didn't put YOUR shoes on the shelf?", by the grace of God I won't bite their head off.....
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1 comment:
If my kids complain about anything I do to help them, I just llet them do it themselves. I already infromed my oldest 5 that they are responsible for their own laundry. If it is left on the bathroom floor or by the washer, I will make sure it gets washed. But they must still escavate through the laundry monster pile on the dining room table and find their stuff. You would think, that since they wash and dry the majority of the laundry, they would remove their own stuff from the clean laundry as they pull it out of the dryer...
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