I try to read daily devotions to help me with parenting. The ones I read today had to do with love, parenting and getting along.



The first devotion talked about being loved by your child. It starts with the verse from 1 Corinthians that we all hear at weddings.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

But what does this have to do with parenting? The story in the devotional is a short, but powerful one.

"GUESS what's in here, Mommy," called my daughter as she came to me, rattling a little heart-shaped trinket box that I had given her to play with. I guessed a penny. No. A ring? No. "I've got love in the box," she announced.

What was in the box? A picture of her parents. WOW! Do we model love for our children, both in the way we speak to them and the way we act with other people? Nobody’s perfect, so I’m not asking if you are kind and loving 110% of the time. Everyone has bad days, believe me, I have them too. But what do we show our kids the majority of the time? Especially kids who have already come from a background of abuse and neglect.

The second devotion that I read had a story about loving children.

If you have children, you’ll know exactly what I mean: Some days you look into their faces, and you see the attitudes of angels; on other days you want to scream, “Why can’t you just get along!” as they get into a ridiculous argument about who moved a toy 1/32nd of an inch.

Oh yeah. I know exactly what this is about. There have been days I have screamed about this exact thing.

But the continuation is one that hit close to home. It asks how we do in our other relationships. I do not get along with my family, and I do not want to. They have harmed my children in emotional ways, that leave me unable to ever trust them again.

Let’s face it, there are days that you just want to scream at your kids, and you FEEL as if you don’t love them, but do you truly stop loving them? I struggle with this on a fairly regular basis, and in fact spent part of a church women’s retreat in tears over this issue. After talking with a wonderful friend I felt better, and she helped me to see that I really did love my son, I was just incredibly frustrated and worn out.

That is a feeling that is fairly common in special needs adoption. We spend so much time advocating for our kids, and doing things for them, that it’s easy to get stressed out. That doesn’t mean we no longer love them. We may not LIKE them on that day, but we still love them. We even love children that have long since left our homes when they may have driven us crazy while they were still here.

Remember one thing, simply “showing up” and being there for your kids is showing love to them. For some of our kids, it is the most basic thing that they need.

If you are interested in the devotions, you may find them at The Purpose Driven Life.

And

The Upper Room

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