Undoctrinated Daughter

. . . I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love. – 2 Corinthians 2: 4

Have you ever had one of those “Aww poop” moments? You know, the one where self discipline or awareness just kind of hits you right in the face, and you stumble backwards and think, “oh poop. My fault.”? Or what my husband and I woke up to at 4:30AM – literal words “Aww poop!” due to our sick dog leaving the grossest of gross poop all through the downstairs (like 3 of the 6 rooms).

My figurative “aww poop” moment and the literal “aww poop” moment collided as I was cleaning the 4:30AM literal poop (sorry lots of poop in here today).

We had a week of tumultuous teenage attitude in the Stankan house. The eldest child most definitely struggled with attitude and grumpy face for mostly unknown causes (hang in there parents – it does get better), and I tried everything from discipline to empathy to get to the root and destroy that cavity of ‘tude’ because oh the faces that child can throw that can rock my very core.

And then something happened at the end of the week that hit me gut wrenchingly hard – something I know but don’t like to admit. When my bearded beauty and our son walked through the door after a long day of working and some play time, I threw that same face to my husband. Why? Because I didn’t get what I wanted when I wanted it – I wanted them home at a certain time, so I could do what I wanted as a family and had waited all day doing all the things including mowing, and playing, and dishes, and vacuuming, and laundry, and all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The “blah” was my literal selfish attitude of what I want when I want it. That selfish attitude is “poop”. AND do you know who called me out on my “poop” – my son. It hurt his feelings. He was happy to be home and see me and mess around and play, and I ruined it (like the eldest) with my grump face and attitude, AND she learned that behavior from me – awwww poop. . .

What my son didn’t realize was that he was gently disciplining his momma. Just like Paul was writing to the Corinthians, please don’t be mad because I discipline you with a heavy heart and tears not to grieve you but to show you how much I love you: Discipline IS love. Discipline isn’t easy to accept, but discipline is necessary for growth and maturity (even for moms). And discipline has follow up, so when my eldest wakes up this morning, the first thing I am going to do is hug her and tell her I am sorry for teaching her grump face and together we are going to correct it.

So, as I began my week with figurative poop, I ended my week with literal poop, but sometimes it takes a lot of poop to make the fields grow.

XOXO, Loni