Life lessons

There are days I feel like a complete failure as a parent. Moments in time that I wish there was a "do over" button. Unfortunately, that does not exist and so I am relegated to praying that my child can see past all my faults. (That doesn't happen either...he usually points them out!) No one told me that at 5 years my son would know EVERYTHING and would have complete meltdowns if I tried to tell him otherwise. The last couple of weeks have created more grey hair than Clairol could ever cover. The perfect angel that most people see and know would turn in to a green hairy monster at home. Every night we would pray, read our Bibles, discuss how good decisions bring good things, and bad decisions bring bad things. Honestly, I thought that I wasn't going to make it out alive this time. However, today was the dawning of a new day. As I sat down with my son this morning he began to tell me that he wrote me a letter yesterday (mind you, he can't really write but that is okay). He told me that it was an "I'm sorry note." He said that he was thinking about how he had been acting and he wanted me to know that  he wanted to do better. At that point my husband walked into the room and told him to go get the note. After he left the room I asked my husband if he had helped him and he told me no that K had spent a lot of time quietly writing the note and he didn't even know what he was doing until after he was done. By that time K was back and this is what is says:

You can clearly make out Mom and Kayden, but he tells me that he was sad that he had hurt me by how he was acting and that he did not want me to feel like he didn't love me. He said that he wrote, "I love you mom and I will do better." (insert crying and angels singing here) Yes, I started crying and then I had an epiphany: I hadn't been on my best behavior either. I had raised my voice, become impatient, and even stopped him from telling me ONE MORE TIME about how he didn't want to do something. What kind of example did I set? I kept telling him to tell me what was making him act that way but I shut him down every time he started to express himself. So what did I do? I decided I would be honest with him too. I told him that I am human. I make mistakes. I am not perfect and I do not always make good choices like I should. I try but I also fail. I also would do better.

In teaching our children the all important life lessons sometimes we may actually learn a lesson or two ourselves.