Lord,
Please grant me patience, so that when I come home frustrated and exhausted my children will never feel that they are the cause. Help me to find rejuvenation in the blessedly brief ride home, so that I can focus on homework and games, and have enough energy to play horsey or hide-and-seek or race cars before bed-time.
Please let the time that I am with my children compensate for the time that I am not… the too frequent late days at work, not seeing them in the morning, not being available to braid their hair (no, no, not Noah’s), pick them up from swim or daycare or [fill in the blank]. Please let them remember what I was present for, and not what I missed. Please let it be enough.
Help me to forgive myself for not being able to volunteer in their classrooms, stay home when they are sick, chaperone field-trips, and be home when they arrive from school. And all the other things that I wish I could be there for.
Please, Lord, let my husband not feel resentment when I have to stay late. Help him to remember that this is just my job… there is no other man, no ulterior motive, nowhere I’d rather be than with my family – this is my job, and much like Kobe – I just do work.
And, Lord, when you’re done with all of that, please let me become independently wealthy so that I can spend all my time doting on my children – driving them crazy, being over-involved in their lives and offering far too much advice, driving the car-pool every day because I can, cuddling with them at any given moment, and doing everything a mother should be able to do.
Lord, in absence of any of the above, please help me to focus on all the things that I am grateful for, and on how lucky I am – in my children, my husband, my life (oh – and my job), so that at the end of the day I don’t feel frustrated, and I feel rejuvenated at the sight of my family when I walk through the door – and I will find the energy to focus on homework and games, and even have enough energy to play horsey before bed-time.
Amen.
(from April 2012)
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