You have gotten some very good advice, here!
You might look at yourself as if you were coaching someone else? If you coach yourself firmly and honestly but also positively, you’ll find it much easier to coach your children in that way.
I just totally bombed yesterday.
No. You made some mistakes. By and large, the gathering went rather well. When it is all over, do not forget to notice what went right along with what went wrong.
Remember, too, to ask if the Lord, in response to your complaints, might not say, “Martha, Martha, you worry about many things…” He wasn’t rebuking Martha, you know. He was trying to give her some perspective as a hostess.
I’m not big on playing hostess b/c I’m not good at doing it graciously and I’m intensely insecure, but a few times a year I do it so that we can host DH’s family to celebrate our kids’ birthdays.
Rather than thinking of your reluctance as a permanent feature of yourself, think of it as a feature you are working on, “…
I am not big on playing hostess because I feel as if I’m still learning how to do it and don’t feel very confident yet…” Do you see the difference? In one version, you tell yourself you are never going to enjoy being a hostess, therefore giving yourself a good reason to get each one over with as quickly as possible. In the second version, you look at the same situation as one that you expect could change for the better, if you keep at it. In that version, you look for ways to gradually master this problem over time without giving yourself an unrealistic “positive thinking” goal such as, “…this time is going to be perfect and I’m going to shine…”
It started when DH was grumpy w/ the kids just before guests arrived and then made rebukes ABOUT me, but not TO me. He may not have even mentioned my name, but he sure meant it toward me that I had overlooked something that was bothering him…
On this, there are two ways to go, and I would combine them. First, the rebuke was not gracious. It hurt you. Forgive that. Having extended mercy to him, extend a bit to yourself. You could not go back and change what you failed to do. You could only repent and amend.
I was scrambling the entire time to get everything in order or pick up from the last round and prepare for the next. I finally sat down to eat and if the baby happened to fall (on the other side of the room), everyone just looked around and one person even said to the person right next to the baby to help him, but they didn’t Thankfully he was alright, but then I just felt this intensity in the room that I’d been shirking my parenting duty b/c I didn’t get up from my lunch (on the floor) to help the baby up when there were able-bodied people around him.
For the love of Pete, people, I’ve been in the kitchen all day preparing your meal and you couldn’t help me out just a little? I went to a birthday party for my GF’s little boy this weekend and the whole time I was just asking what I could do to help her out, and I did.
First off, you are assuming someone expected
you to get up. They may have been waiting to see if you wanted to let the baby handle his little mishap on his own. They may have been each figuring which one of them would take care of him, none of them expecting it would be you.
Second, it is OK to ask someone to help you, if you need help. If you go over the whole to-do list with your husband beforehand, the amount of stuff that needs to be done will be more clear. You’re less likely to forget to do anything and it will be easier to look at that long to-do list and say “Well, what are you going to do? What can the kids do?”
When someone tells you something “unscheduled” needs to be done, you can look at it as if you were the private or you can look at it as if you were the general. You have to be willing to do everything, but you don’t have to do it all yourself. Again, talk to your husband and work out how to divide these things, but it is OK to say, “Hon? Can you take care of that?” or to one of the kids, “Jane, I’m going to go change the baby. Would you take care of ________? Do it now, so it is done when I get back.”
I wish I didn’t feel this way. I wish I could live Mother Teresa’s humility list and accept rebukes humbly and graciously and not be so easily offended. I know the big ugly here is PRIDE. Just wish I’d handled myself better and been more willing to serve. If anybody said a word about the baby’s diaper (at least 3 times in 2 hours), I didn’t say a word, just scooped him and took him to our room to change him. But when I returned to our room full of guests, in my heart I was thinking “There, are you satisfied, will you get off my back now?”
O, Lord, how I have failed thee!
Maybe the issue is practice. Mother Teresa was not made in a day. She also accepted help; she did not insist on doing all the work herself. It is good to correct yourself, but sometimes when the Lord hears you saying, “Oh, I have failed!!!”, He may just respond, “Well, yes you did. Let me help you up, and we can try again. You can’t get there, but I can get you there, if you allow me and let yourself lean on me.” If you were helping a little weak thing to become your competent servant, would you do less? How much more will Our Lord concentrate not on what we are not, but on moving us each along to what He means to make of us. If we do not see that He is doing this gracious and patient work in us, it makes it hard to see that He is doing the same in others.
We don’t have anything to give, excepting that which we accept from God for ourselves. Accept mercy, and you’ll have more of it to give.
