thought provoking comment

Tuesday night was a blast meeting our meal group (see previous post) that we will get to know very well over the next few months. We are going through a study guide and DVD by John Ortberg, The Life You've Always Wanted. We started discussing some questions Tuesday night related to the first DVD clip.

One question we answered was...Describe a person or a time when you felt completely accepted for who you are.

One lady at our table said that besides her husband (which had already been said), her kids unconditionally accepted her. That thought has stayed in my head for the last couple of days. At first the thought struck me because I have never thought of my boys that way. They definitely take me with all my flaws and don't really care about them. Kids may ask when something looks out of the ordinary or they have never seen that before but other than asking, they move on and don't care. They don't care if you have more or less hair than someone else, have a pimple, are big or little, have wrinkles, have different colored skin or other unusual features. They just expect you do be like themselves and when you are not, they question it and move on but don't separate from people that are different than themselves. I can definitely learn something from my kids in this area.

I think another reason why this lady's comment struck me so much is because I know that my kids don't like me sometimes. They don't like when they get punished or told that they can't have something or can't do something. I think I interpret that as them not accepting me when really it isn't that at all. Dislike is not the same as unacceptable. I have seen my kids be very accepting of me and just not accepting of punishment.

Overall, I am loving and enjoying my kids more all the time. They are getting to be so much fun and are taking a lot less energy to discipline them. If they stay this way the rest of the time they live in my house, I could be one very happy mom. They still get timeouts, sent to their room occasionally and get things taken away but they are learning quicker and it is more rewarding.