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How I learned to stop yelling at the kids...


With the kids in school, we've talked a lot lately about being kind to others. And listening when our teachers (and parents) talk to us.  The kids are pretty good with being kind, but it's the listening piece we've struggled with.  Lately I find myself yelling at them because they are generally misbehaving more.  They seem to be keeping it together at school; it's only at home that we've had a lot of struggles with following directions, picking up toys, not fighting with our siblings, and general meltdowns over random things (mainly due to being over-tired I've surmised). 

I've prayed for patience and to not have to yell at them.  I thought that God would answer my prayers by having the children behave better and listen more.  Yeah, it didn't quite happen that way.

Last Monday, I started having a stabbing pain every time I coughed. (And I was coughing a lot thanks to being sick.)  Turns out I have an inflammation of my cartilage under my breastbone.  I can't take anti-inflammatory medication for it - the only advice the doctor had was to wait it out. Once the inflammation goes down, the pain will go away. But to settle the pain, I need to stop coughing, sneezing, working out, and generally moving the right half of my body since when I move my rib cage, it bothers the inflammed cartilage. Since most of those things cannot be control, I'm stuck in pain for most of my day. It's really rather annoying since I still have to go to work, do my house duties, and care for the children. (And take deep breaths from time to time.) 

Yesterday Keith was gone most of the day.

The children were not behaving well

I yelled.

Then I cried because yelling makes the pain worse.

As I sat outside watching the three kids build a house out of leaves then kick it down with a soccer ball, I was looking up at the sky through the trees when it hit me.  

God answered my prayer to not yell anymore.

Just not in exactly the way that I had hoped.

It reminded me of the old Stones song:

You can't always get what you want,
But if you try sometimes
You get what you need....

I forget sometimes that God always answers your prayers: in His own way, not necessarily the way you want Him too.  I have to keep reminding myself to be patient and wait this pain out (although the ability to be able to run would be nice since I have a race in 3 weeks that I probably can't do).  I also now have a fool-proof way to NOT yell at the kids (however, they still don't seem to be behaving any better...).  In a roundabout way, God is speaking to me... I just need to figure out what he's trying to say.

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need

Comments

Unknown said…
Hope you feel better soon. xxx

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