I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall in the boys’ bedroom with all three children sitting around me. I was on the verge of tears, asking for their forgiveness. Once again, I had succumbed to the temptation of yelling at my children. I don’t remember the reason, just that I had yelled, and now I felt terrible about it. As my confession came to a close, Daddy arrived home from being out of town for a few days. “Oh, I wish you got home twenty minutes ago,” I lamented.
This was not the first time, nor the last, that this scenario played out in our home. Somehow, I unconsciously set my patience meter to last until my husband’s return. Regardless of the length of his absence, when the meter ran out, so did my patience.
In the early years of homeschooling, raising my voice to get my children’s attention or to correct them was a daily temptation. When trying to round up my squirrelly students for our next focused activity, I would become frustrated and use a loud voice to get them to listen.
My journals have many entries of my pleading with the Lord to change me. I asked Him to help me walk in the Spirit so that I could get through the day without raising my voice. One of my regular requests was, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). I needed to change, and I knew that was only going to happen by God’s grace. Yelling was too habitual for me to change myself. I needed the Lord to change me.
I leave you with a photo of an Arizona Milkweed, taken in my neighborhood's pollinator garden.