Friday, October 14, 2011

WAR . . . What is it good for?

I'm going through a stretch of bad attitude right now . . .no, not from one of my teens . . my OWN bad attitude! I'm tired. I'm too busy and the joy I normally find in serving my family is at war with a "woe is me" mind set (and woe is kicking joy's butt)!

I know my attitude is wrong. I am trying to fix it. I have been praying and reading God's word regularly. I have been attempting to take those "everyone is dumping on me" thoughts captive but not always succeeding. The sad thing is, nothing around here has changed. My children are generally helpful without me having to ask. They get along well and we rarely deal with fighting (I attribute that to the Filipino style of leadership here where the younger children must listen to the olders - there's no "you're not the boss of me" crap happening around here because, yes, if he is older than you, he IS the boss of you. IF he's a mean boss, I'll take him down myself!). We're not under financial stress or a health crisis (praise God) but I'm just having to work double time NOT to get resentful quickly.

I don't believe I'm having any post-adoption blues. I had those after one of our earlier adoptions and I know how they feel - much worse than this. I think that somewhere along the line, I have allowed the Enemy to slide a paradigm shift into my brain and I'm not looking at things with the most Godly perspective. I also believe that some of my selfless serving of the family was done in my flesh and so it's just not sustainable. Burn out is inevitable when you're not walking in a Holy Spirit fueled manner. On a practical level, I'm just tired. Our public schooler needs to be woken up at 6:30am and I usually stay up waaaaay too late at night trying to get a little quiet time to read or just see what's new on craigslist. It sounds like I need a vacation ALONE but I believe that would be the worst thing I could do. I have found the concept of "me time" to be a big lie! Whenever I do get a little "me time" (out to dinner with a friend or Anthony takes all the kids to a movie and leaves me home alone) I don't tend to feel refreshed afterward. I tend to feel more greedy for just a little more of that time . . .I think "me time" feeds the beast but maybe that's just me. I find the remedy for eyes-on-self syndrome to be serving others just a little bit more.
Now that I've dumped all my dirty laundry on the doorstep of this blog, I think it's time to sign off, spend some more time in prayer and see if I can recognize the cure for my slump when God offers it! I know it's just around the corner. He's always been so good to convict and cure me in the same time frame. I'm definitely convicted . . . looking forward to "cured"!

Romans 7
21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God,in my inner being, 23but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

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