Cracked-Pot Mom

I am a cracked pot. Deeply cracked. We all are...some of us just hide it better than others. I don't hide it well at all. My emotions are always on display right smack dab in between my ears and my imperfections are not the kind that can be hidden easily. Sometimes, this makes me mad. But sometimes, it's a relief. People tend to know exactly what they're getting into when they start hanging out with me. Just ask Paul. I laid out my 5 year plan for him on our first date (which included marriage and having 5 babies)! And he still called for a second one...crazy man.

Anyway, I hate my deficiencies as a human. I mean, they make me frustrated and crazy and then all those deficiencies just show all the more. It's a viscous cycle, really. In fact, I can really get lost in them. They can weigh me down in a big, bad way. Do you ever feel like that?

Sometimes, I look at my poor girls and wonder how the heck, I'm supposed to raise healthy kids!?! Me?!? And yet, they are so forgiving of all of my imperfections. Even when those imperfections affect them to the point where they are hurt by them.

For example, I like schedules and routine and I always have a to do list rattling in the back of my brain. It's a control freak, Type A thing and I don't like it one bit! Why? Because I find that being able to cross something off of my "to do" list often takes priority over teaching my children. Because I too often allow my own agenda get in the way of nurturing their hearts. Because I find myself reacting to them as I go about my business instead of being proactive and making them my business.

I'm really putting myself out there today. Does anyone relate, even a smidgen?

But here's what it boils down to. I fix my gaze on the wrong thing!!! If I'm not focused on all of my deficiencies and down about that, then I'm focused on fixing them with more schedule and routine and rules. My gaze is on ME!

No wonder I can feel so un-centered, so off-kilter, so...nuts! I'm not centering myself on the TRUTH. I'm not fixing my gaze where it's supposed to be!

JESUS.

"We all have deficiencies. God created us that way. Why? So that we would learn to depend on Him." - Susanne Scheppman

"...'my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." - 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Lord, my imperfections are great in number and in strength when my eyes are not fixed on You. Like the potter centers his clay on the wheel, center me, Lord. Like he pushes and shapes it as the wheel turns, mold me Father. Make your strength perfect in my weakness, just as you've promised you would.