Monthly Confessional

Time: my most precious commodity. At the end of each day I am left with a lingering sense of lost moments, discarded opportunities, forgotten promises. With three children under three, every day is condensed to the simple objective of survival. However, those wasted seconds, minutes, and hours will one day come back to haunt me. I suppose at the end of all things, we will always be left with the fact that it was not enough. We could have done more. We could have tried harder. So I do not pretend to subject myself to unrealistic expectations that steal my joy... I am human. I fail. I make mistakes and won't do it right all the time. But the reality is this: I don't want to survive. I don't want to make it by. I don't want to sit down at the end of the night feeling as though I had a 'productive day' because my to-do list is smaller whilst my children spent the afternoon in front of the TV or playing in a room. I want to do it right. I want to be engaged with my children, enthralled by them. I want to use every opportunity to teach them and hug them and praise them and delight in the goodness they represent in my life. 

I hereby confess my attempts to occupy my children with things so that I can get my chores done. I confess to wasting away whole days with trying to keep them busy so that I can accomplish my tasks.

I sincerely hope that this merely portrays me as human rather than an awful mother. I do try. In fact, I spend my evenings after the kids are in bed pining away at what could have been and regretting the poor decisions I made that day. I go over my catalogue of confrontations with the children and dissect them in infinite detail wondering how I could have handled it better. And through this daily 'recap' if you will, I hope that I am becoming a better mother. I hope that next time I don't make the same mistakes or fall into the same pits. I am learning every day and my children delight in teaching me and challenging me with new and brilliant strategies to test my knowledge!

I like to think I am a good mother, even when I don't do it all right. My kids keep me young and bring a fresh vibrancy to my life that I would be lost without. They are my light, my sunrise, my bouquet of very wild flowers! Many would tell me that I 'am a wonderful mother' and I would believe them :) But the reality is that I could always do better. And it is this unattainable goal of perfection that I will strive towards. I will never make it there, it will be disappointing each day when I fail, but my kids are worth the effort. For them I will get up each day aiming to be the very best, engaging, delightful, ever-praising, cheerful mother that I can be and pray for the strength to do it!