Tag Archives: mercies

Reset.

calm

“Remember. You show our children how to respond to stressful and difficult moments by how you respond to those moments.”

This was the reminder Kris gave me over the phone last night. You know, sometimes, when our husbands are right, we kind of want to roll our eyes or maybe throw a pie in their face. I jest a little. But, I couldn’t do either last night. I told him I recognized that my response was not good, and that I had allowed myself to get overwhelmed and would work through my stuff. He told me recognizing I was not in a good place did not make that place right. Again, he was right. So, I had to make myself right. And, I needed to do it right away. Not the next morning when all of the mercies are new. But, I needed to adjust then. In THAT moment.

It’s hard. We can work ourselves up faster than Clark Kent can turn into Super-Man. Then, we implode. Because, negativity is designed to do just that…..implode. We have to stop feeding it and giving energy to it. “When we hang up, reset your emotions, and go make it right,” he told me with the most tender of tones.

I didn’t have to wait for a sunrise to make that moment of spiraling emotions right. I just had to push the reset button. I didn’t feel like doing it, because staying in my overwhelmed emotions seemed easier. They validated me. They allowed me to justify my responses to stress. But, they didn’t produce anything good.

They didn’t model mercy or compassion.

They didn’t model the scripture, “be anxious for nothing…”

They didn’t model how to respond when life gets hard.

They didn’t model light.

They didn’t heal anything or anyone.

We can’t always calm the storm around us, but we can ALWAYS calm the storm WITHIN us.

And, that’s exactly what I did. I spoke to the storm within me, and said, “Peace be still.” I called my children together and asked forgiveness and spoke peace to them. In the very moment of my overwhelmed emotions, I reset and made it right.

You, too, always have the option to reset. No matter how powerful those negative emotions become….the God within you is greater. It is simply choosing to acknowledge who you really are and tapping into the peace that is already within you. Because, you have everything you need already inside of you. Everything.

You lack nothing.

Today, I choose to create my calm. I choose to model it. I choose to be the light in the dark and the calm in the storm. I choose to reset.

What do you choose today?

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like shepherd. – Rumi

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Filed under God Stuff, Motherhood, parenting, Uncategorized, Virtue

Do Over.


Remember when you were a kid playing one of those recess games, and someone would yell, “DO OVER!”  And, usually he got his do-over?  Life’s not always so simple.  There have been many circumstances in my twenty-three thirty-three years I wish I could do over. 

Like the time I told my parents I was going to see Driving Miss Daisy with friends, and I cruised up and down Taylor Street instead.  My mom asked me which theater the movie was playing in….smart little booger….. “the left theater, center theater or right theater?” 

“The, the, the left!” I answered.

How could I not know it was the center?  After all, the movie was filmed in my hometown.  Why wouldn’t it take center stage?  I wish I could do that one over.  It would have saved me two weeks of grounding.

I’d also like a do-over on the time I colored my hair orange, my last speeding ticket, and probably the chips and queso I ate yesterday.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I’d so eat the chips and queso again today.

Point is, we all have something in life we’d like to get a do-over on.  For most of us, they are not things as trivial as mentioned above.  We’d like a do-over on a friendship, a marriage, a job – you know what I’m talkin’ about.  And, while we can’t get do-over’s on those things, we do get a do-over every day with God. 

Many people think we serve a God who stands over us with a giant rock, ready to crush it on our little heads.  A God whose wrath is fierce.  A God who positions Himself to punish His children at a moment’s notice. 

That’s not Him. 

At the second we ask Him to create a clean heart in us, He does.  He is a God who loves.  A God who forgives.  We don’t have to earn it.  We don’t have to work for it.  The price has already been paid.  He freely gives, we freely receive.

I get a do-over every morning.  I’m glad I do.  I need it.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  Lamentations 3:22-23

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Filed under God Stuff, life