I remember playing Battleship as a kid.  I loved it!  It was all about guessing and  throwing bombs that you hoped hit your opponent’s ship.  You could come up with secret ways to try to attack, but so much of it was luck.  Sometimes, I feel like parenting is that way as well.

As a mom, I want my kids to feel loved, supported, accepted as they are, and know they are masterpieces created by God.  Living that out everyday is hard.  In moments where they are all crying and I feel pulled in so many directions I want to curl up and escape.  Since it’s not always possible to physically “escape” my parenting issue, I find I do that in other ways.  I pull out and create distance from everything/everyone else in my life.

I pray I’m instilling certain things like grace, love, patience, gratefulness, and joy in my kids.  So often it’s a guessing game on if I’m doing the right thing, so they see these truths in me.  I feel like I am always questioning my parenting skills, which makes it such a sensitive issue.  Advice is needed in life, but it can be so deflating as well.  Much like battleship, it feels like I’m throwing things out there that I hope sticks.

My current parenting issue, is potty training.  I’ll tell you something, potty training is THE hardest parenting issue we have encountered.  Even as I type that and open up about it, it’s hard to admit out loud.  I feel myself being vulnerable and want to take the truth back.  Many of you know we have gone through a lot with our little J from allergies, eczema, asthma to developmental delays.  It has been a hard road to get to where he is today.  I praise God for the blessing he is and all that we have learned and overcome with him, so to say potty training is the hardest…it’s really telling.

One part that is hard for me is the comparison.  What has been the hardest for us is one of the easiest things for others.  I’m jealous.  I don’t understand why that is the case, or how it is fair.  Life’s not fair-I know!  We went through this with Caleb and again now with J.  I know every kid is different and I have to hold on to that, but I have had two really hard ones!  I would say J is even harder than Caleb.  We have tried every tactic.  Literally everything.  Even the newest tactic I have heard…and it didn’t work.  I could list them all, but I feel that would be defending myself and not healthy.

Going through J’s allergies, so many opinions came our way….from doctors, specialists, therapists to friends and family.  Everyone meant well…but it was exhausting and I feel like I am there again.  Emotionally I am toast from this single element of my life and the exhaustion is overflowing into every area of my life, and I can’t do it all.  Since I can’t do it all, and I have to do this…everything else is like put on hold?!  The life of a mom.  I have to choose to lean on Jesus and know he knows what J needs and will lead us…and give me what I need in the process.  I pray I will not have a child in kindergarten still pooping in his pants.

Potty training is my current battle.  I pray I don’t stay in this dark “hole” for long, and there will be a day when I literally don’t have to stare at my child all day, everyday and try to keep him from hiding and pooping in his pants or literally peeing on my floor from having no pants on (trying to prevent the pooping in the pants).

Until that day is here, I pray God gives me the grace to be patient and the strength to not compare.  The truth I am trying to embed into my children, I need to believe myself.  I will accept J as the little masterpiece God created.