March's Power: Patience

A "power" from the book Deliberate Mothering:  12 Powers of Peace, Purpose, Order, and  Joy.

The mother who was in charge of writing this topic for the book is a mother of 5 children under 4 years old; an older daughter, and then two sets of twins. Her name is Catherine Arveseth and just from reading her little section I look up to her immensely.  I mean, who better to write about the subject of patience?

One of my favorite things she says is that she was really patient before she had children...I think most of us feel that way.  She shared Wikipedia's definition of patience...

            "The state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties."

In other words, we can't really know if we have patience until we are pushed beyond our limits.    Mothering is hard because our children are always changing, always in a new stage and thus, we can never get comfortable with our patience, they are AMAZING at finding new ways to test us.

For example:  Yesterday, I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day.  Eden came in and was playing in the cupboard beneath my feet (a daily occurrence) and then she scampered out of the room.  After about 10 minutes, I came out and found her proudly peeling the backing off of ALL my panty liners.  "Look mom!  Stickers!" 

She was so proud of her art.  I mean, if that wasn't $4 worth of something I needed, or something slightly less awkward, you could really appreciate the way they are wrapped so well around the handle of the laundry basket.

                              Look at this innocent little face.  She honestly thinks they're stickers!

Don't you think she'll love this picture when she's a teenager?  I'm already excited about my moment of revenge:)  Hanging this picture with a caption reading "This is Eden Doutre" all over her high school.  Perfect!

This month I am going to try to pause an extra minute to breathe before I act.  That is my goal in the patience category.  I leave you for today with another quote from the book from Ann Voskamp, "The moment I am most repelled by a child's behavior, is my sign that I need to draw closest to that child."