Not my finest day......

It was not my finest day of parenting......

1) This weekend we decided we should go see Star Wars again in a very cool IMAX theater. So, I looked up the theater online and was sure tickets would still be available when we got there after church this morning. Guess what? It was sold-out! I had a very disgruntled crew on my hands for the drive home! I apologized; they forgave me; we all moved on.

2) I got so fed up with the chaos in our house (mostly, I got fed up with myself because I let things slide over the holiday break, but I tend not to keep my fed-up-ness to myself) that I declared a "we are going to pick up this house!" afternoon. (Yes, I did this almost as soon as we walked in the house from our disappointing not-seeing-Star Wars fiasco. Good timing, don't you think?!) The boys helped without grumbling and things were off to a good start. I told them to take the recycling outside, which they did.....also without grumbling. When they came back in, Michael said, "The big one is the recycling, right?" Uuummmm......No! Which led me into a rant about how could you think that and now you have to go back outside and fix what you did. To their credit, the boys put their boots back on and silently walked outside. When they returned, they were soaking wet. (Wait-- did I forget to mention that it was a torrential downpour out there......which I had not bothered to remember or listen for?) I apologized.....again.

Thankfully, our boys are extremely gracious and forgave me for both incidents. 

Which made me stop and think about how often the Lord is also gracious and forgives me. Last week we heard a great sermon on the importance of prayer as a non-negotiable in our lives. I left church determined to participate in 517 -- 5 areas of prayer, with 1 other person, 7 days each week. My determination lasted until later that day. I allowed a whole bunch of other nonsense to get in the way of my "non-negotiable" and let it slide most of the week. I eventually did sort out my 5 areas of prayer, but I never spent quiet, uninterrupted time with the Lord regarding those areas and certainly not with another person. This morning at church, I found myself apologizing to God without any excuses. I knew I was the only one to blame for my lack of discipline in this area this week. Thankfully, He is always gracious and quick to forgive me, even though He knows I will probably mess this up again this week. 

Lord, help me to be as gracious and forgiving to others as my boys and You are to me......even when I know the one apologizing will probably do the same thing again.

And, just in case you were wondering, I went online and bought tickets for Star Wars at the really cool IMAX theater for Chris to take the boys tomorrow afternoon.