'Finishing Is Better Than Starting'

Ecclesiastes 7:8 Finishing is better than starting. Patience is better than pride. NLT

There are days where I am so proud of myself for how patient I am with my children. And then there are days like today.

Days like today make me think that my 'good' days aren't very productive. They make me think that the difficult days are the test of my true level of patience. I barely passed today. I yelled a lot today. I hate yelling. I especially hate it when I yell. It's prideful, can be hurtful, and I just don't like doing it. And it's mostly a result of me not being patient. The yelling started today as a result of one of the chirren putting another in harms way, and I just didn't make myself stop right away. I eventually caught hold of my tone, but hated myself afterward.

I often wonder how my mom did it. I have mostly great memories of my childhood. An even tempered mother, who took it day by day with eight children. I feel like I don't measure up to her in any way.

But I'm not raising her kids. I'm raising mine.

I'm raising (with the much needed help of the Holy Spirit) the most precious humans I've ever come in contact with. Do they push their five month old little brother out of his chair? Yes. Do they manage to get even the tiniest amount of play-dough strewn across a fairly large living room? Yes. Do they start asking for something even though I'm not even finished fulfilling their last 427 requests? Most definitely.

But I signed up for this blindly I might add. And I'm not sure most people would sign up for parenting if they knew what was truly in store. But the beauty of it all is that I completely believe that this learning experience, this day to day struggle to be a better person, this realization that life is, more often than not, not about me, is that I not only get to help bring up three (probably more) amazing creatures one of which is still roaming around way after her bed time but I also get to learn how to be a better mother/Christ follower/wife/sister/friend. With every test of patience, and there are oh so many in a single day, a little bit of selfish flesh is stripped away to reveal a better me.

I know I'm not writing anything new to the world. But these experiences I've had in the last four years are so new to me, as are the revelations they bring. We don't have to pray to be more patient, we will have patient building exercises for the rest of our lives. We have to pray we retain the lessons we learn from them, pass or fail.

We must finish. We must learn to put patience before pride. We must do this for not only our offspring, but to become the being that our Father first intended us to be.

So don't pray for patience, we're going to learn it or we're not, it's up to us.

Pray for the strength to finish.

Galatians 5:22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. NLT