"Mommy If I'm Good...?"
Parenting, at any stage most defiantly has it’s up’s and down’s. Heck… if I were to be completely honest, and transparent here I would have to say that PARENTING SUCKS SOMETIMES. Yup, I said it! All you judgmental, perfect parents can put your daggers away, because you know that you have thought this same statement to yourself a time or two so, relax. But in the most stressful times with our kids, something can happen, and it cause you to step back, and reevaluate your words, and your ways.
Donny and I have three kids together. Nevaeh, who is sixteen, and Tre and Makai who are four (yep, they were a little shock to our lives). I had Nae before I met Donny, but he has taken her on as his own. It blesses me that he has never referred to her as his step-daughter. What’s even better, is when he and I got back from our honeymoon, the first thing Nae asked him was if she could call him dad. For an eleven year-old that is pretty amazing. It was hard for me to adjust to hearing her say that, but I guess she couldn’t just call him Mr. Donny forever right?
When we got married, I told Donny that I didn’t want anymore kids. Too many years had passed already, and Nae was eleven at the time. I was twenty-eight, and felt way too old to be starting over. He came back and said “Could we just have one?” God really has a sense of humor right. We got pregnant in the first year of our marriage. I honestly didn’t think I would even be able to have any more kids due to some selfishness on my part years before ( that’s for another story). Twins were not something either one of us were expecting, but God knew what we needed.
I’ll never forget the day we found out. I had actually had a dream about twins the night before, and Donny and I were joking about it that morning. When the nurse told me…I absolutely lost it! I didn’t loose it in a sweet, “Oh my goodness what a blessing” kind of way, I lost it in a “I’m going to kill you Donny, you did this to me” kind of way. My overdramatic, victim mentality was shut down real quick, because the doctor told me it is actually the female body that determines how many babies, and the male body determines the sex.
Telling Nevaeh was interesting. She was not pleased at all when we gave her the news, and even more so when we told her there were two, I think she just laughed at me. She never wanted siblings. She enjoyed being the center of our attention. Who wouldn’t? I think for her, (whether she will ever admit it or not) her reasons were deeper than that. Due to my less than stellar parenting when I was a single mom, she clung to us and wanted our full attention, especially Donny’s .
Something rose up in me during those nine moths of pregnancy (besides everything I ate). I knew this was my second chance. I wanted to be a better parent, than I was before. While I strived to be a better parent to the boys, it would cause me to be better to Nae, even if I didn’t get it right every time.
Let us fast-forward to the present. As parents, we will resort to using any, and all tactics to get our kids to fall in line. I know I’ve had to become quite creative with my three, ( you will have to ask Nae about the two months we grounded her from all but five pieces of her clothing…that was a WIN for us). However, without realizing it, we will say things to our kids, and once its repeated back to us it can stop us dead in our tracks. I was in the kitchen with Makai the other day, and he kept going on and on about wanting something. I tend to tune him out when he stats to whine. When I finally did hear him, the only thing I heard was “Mommy, if I’m good…?” My heart stopped. What have I said to him to make him think he’s not good?
We all do it as parents, “ If you are good then we can go here, or if you are good we can get this.” They are just words, but when he said it, it made me feel as if he was questioning whether or not I thought he was worthy of my love. I know it’s a stretch, and I’m probably reading to much into it, but that’s what I felt in the moment. We have to be careful in how we say things. Yes, there are conditions for my children to get the things they want, they have to obey the rules set before them, but my love is unconditional. I never want them to confuse the two. In Ephesians 2:8-9 it says “8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”
Even in our relationships with Christ, there are expectations of us to obey His commandments, and to believe in Him. His love however, is unconditional. We don’t have to work for it. So many of us spend our lives WORKING to earn the love of others. I can admit I was guilty of it when it came to Nevaeh. I always felt like I had to work harder to get her to love me because I messed up so many times before with her. Allow me to reassure you today as you read this, GOD IS SO IN LOVE WITH YOU! He designed every part of you. Even if you were a surprisingly unexpected gift, just like all my kids were, God has a master plan for your life, someone on this Earth needs you. Please know that you are unconditionally love by the creator of the universe. Peace out, and journey on friends.
