Are you KIDDING me?!?

(with exerpts from The Coffee Moms Devotional)

This morning Hazel snapped the ear piece off of my glasses. Eli hit Korben. Blue paint got all over my table and bathroom doorknobs. I threw out my back.

...it's not even 9:40am.

Believe it or not, I never knew I could even get angry until I had children. Sure, I'd been upset, but I never realized I was capable of spontaneous combustion until I became a Mom. My ability to go from June Cleaver to Cruella DeVil is terrifyingly quick. I can go days, weeks even, with a patient, cheerful countenance, and then anger sneaks up on me, silently, stealthily; in an instant it consumes me, shaking the foundations of my very being.

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. Psalm 103:8

Even as I am reacting, I know anger is not the answer, but I am Dorothy in the whirlwind, not sure how to get out of the strom. For me, my trigger is feeling a loss of control. If the house is a mess, I feel out of control and while I try to contain the chaos, typically more chaos is breaking out elsewhere in the house... that is when I most often snap.

This morning, I was having a moment. Instead of reacting out of anger and yelling, I sat on the couch, ignored all of the screaming around me and texted a few friends with some very honest feelings. Their outpour of love and support was just what I needed. One Mom shared these verses with me:

1 Peter 5:7, Psalm 55:22, Isaiah 41:10

I made smoothies for the kids and while they quietly slurped, I took a moment to copy the verses down in my prayer journal.

Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you. 1 Peter 1:13

We need to prepare our minds and be disciplined and purposeful about our thoughts and actions, avoiding anger to the best of our ability. Still, no matter how controlled or "good" we may be, we are plagued by human nature. There is no way we can make it without grace.

As we prepare for our fourth child, I am also desperately preparing my mind for what is to come. Blame it on hormones, but I do feel that often while pregnant and during the post-partum phase, I feel much more out of control, so therefore am triggered more often to anger. I am constantly trying to remind myself that what I do and don't do, say and don't say, how I act and react, contributes to how my children see themselves and the world around them. So, my goal, is to make "every effort", try harder, step away when I feel the anger bubbling inside.

For this reason make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverence; and to perseverence, godliness.         2 Peter 1:5-6