Fill My Child With Peace

This. ALL THE DAYS this.

Anyone else? Lysa, an author, speaker and inspirational woman posted this on her Facebook page this past Sunday. There I was, sitting on the couch, under the weather and wearing my cranky pants, and unintentionally scrolling through my Facebook feed when I came upon it. It stopped me and my scrolling thumb right in its tracks. I tapped the picture to make it bigger. And I read it again. And again. And Again. I ‘liked it’ and saved it on my phone. Because holiest of craps, I had just done that. Moments ago. Not the ‘send them out the door full of peace’ but rather the latter, the ‘echoes of my frustrations’.

I was sick, tired and just not feeling myself that day. And I was full of irritation and frustration. And I let all those feelings drop all over my sunny faced boy that morning. And really, the ‘I was sick, tired…blah blah blah’ doesn’t matter, does it? Because there’s always something. We can always find some root cause to keep us from taking responsibility for our behavior.

Here’s the thing. I am human. I have a range of emotions and most of them get tried on for size many of the days in my life. That’s what we humans do. And here’s the other thing, I’m working hard on not berating myself for handing all my frustrations on a platter and giving them to my son to hold on any given day. I have guilt. I read this on Sunday and felt a million pangs of guilt. And shame. Oh the shame. It hit me hard and I felt sad for letting those echoes reverberate in my son’s soul. But the fact is, it happened. And I can’t change the past, which is why I refuse to berate myself for those actions.

But I did make a point to be more mindful of my behavior. When he came back home later that day, I apologized to him for how I treated him. That was step one. Let him know he is loved and appreciated and ensure he knows the yelling and throwing of MY frustrations, was not HIS fault. Step two? Practice mindfulness. Practice being aware of my mounting frustrations and throw the darn echoes of them out the door, not at my son.

I will fail. I will fall. I will make mistakes and the echoes will sometimes slip out fast and furiously and chase him out the door. But you know what? I am trying. And that counts. I am working on it. And that counts. And when I’m really struggling with filling him with Peace? I change this quote into a prayer, “God, help me fill my child with Peace, instead of the echoes of my frustration.”