Issues of the Heart

Tonight we went to our Marriage Community Group that meets every Sunday night. It is always so refreshing and it is so important and amazing to have other couples speak truth (which sometimes is hard to do and hard to hear) in your life and to see things from different perspectives. Tonight CJ was sharing on how hard and frustrated he had been with our eldest. Hudson can really crank out the bad attitudes and crankiness and CJ does not stay in his "hoop" so to speak well....most of the time he does, but today he just was so mad at him. Anyways, through knowing each other all so well and our backgrounds and things that trigger us, the leader of the group finally asked, "when he complains, do you take it personally...like you aren't enough?" Long story short, there was a resounding yes from him. Codependents do this...if something is wrong with you, they tend to think it is them, they take it personally and they want everyone to be okay so they can feel okay. He has come so far from being co-dependent, but he is wired with this bent and growing up this was the theme he always felt. All of us to some degree struggle with this as children and adults.
Bottom line is it is just another whisper from Satan. His forces are real. I am believing this more and more, the sermon today was on this and I would highly recommend you look on the Brookhills website for it this week. It was good to identify the underlying message behind CJ's behavior and frustration and for him to acknowledge the urge to jump out of his hoop! We are praying for patience and love for the banshee's and to shepherd their hearts!  Being a parent is no joke!! Thankfully, we have a mighty God who we can ultimately surrender our children AND parenting to. We are all so broken...
On a lighter subject, I sent the older two to their Sunday School classes alone, they were pumped. Apparently, one wasn't quite ready for it. In the middle of the sermon, in the MEGA church we go to we see a man (I am thinking what is he doing?) he is bent over low talking to someone. That someone was Hudson. After church was over and I had collected myself from wanting strangling him (as David Platt's teaching on Satan wanting to kill, steal and destroy...I am wanting to do this to my first born) he said he had just been laying on the padded thing, that padded thing being a PRAYER BENCH down the aisle for all to see. At least he said he had been listening! And now I understand what my mama meant when she said "why mothers turn grey!"