I Chose

I am so excited! My Goodness, I have done something good. Enjoy this moment because you will rarely hear me say it. I am praising God for His growth in me to reach my dream of being a better mother.

My daughter is going to be 16. She of course has visions of a job of some sort while I would prefer that she not work during the school year. Voila!!! Lifeguarding. My son, the 25 year old living in Arizona Financial Advisor, had been a lifeguard at 16 and credits a lot of his work ethic, etc to having had that opportunity. I presented this to my daughter about 1 1/2 months ago and she said yes so I signed her up for the course. Oops, and here comes soccer ref training, we got two days notice for this class which she has wanted to take for over a year. Both classes are each two weeks long and this week those classes overlap one another.

I knew that I would need to take a little extra time to prepare for this week to support her as I understand that she is still a kid sort of and has never had many "had-to's" in life. I understood that this might be a hard week. Well, we were readied and prepared and my mom, Praise God for her, had my back in every meaning of the statement. We were set to go.

However, we didn't factor in the weekend of not enough sleep for my daughter, or the fact that the school's soccer pre-season games just happen to be going on this week as well. Hello meltdown on my girl's part. Don't you just know that she never wanted to be a lifeguard or do any of this training that she has to go through? Don't you know that this is all for me? Oh, but yes, it's all my fault that she is missing the games, etc.

I chose to understand. I chose to remain calm and am praying that no matter what this week brings, I will stay strong, steadfast, steady and calm through any of the storm that she is trying to toss about. I have prayed on this. I have "huddled" with my mother to make certain that we are on the same page. I do understand. This is a test of endurance, but praise God my daughter is so blessed to have two people who are standing right behind her holding her up. I know that these tests of her endurance are so going to pay off for her in the next year of her life and who knows, possibly the rest of her life as in my son's case. All I know is that I made a choice to understand and that she is going to be better off because of of the fact that we stayed. I love that girl.

Today I ask you to join me in prayer that we hesitate to find ourselves in the midst of anger. That we try to choose to look at the other side of things. That we understand where others are coming from and let the light of Jesus shine through us.

Hallelujah!