A Mom's Prayer for Today

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Dear God,

We come before you today in our frailty, full of doubts and inadequacies, and ask you to equip us for this calling you have placed before us.

These children whom we love more than life itself, these precious gifts from God, can challenge us in ways that we never thought possible.  We would do anything for them - yet all too often, we don't know what to do with them.

Give us wisdom.  When we want to throw up our hands at another need for discipline, at another sulky attitude, at another chore not finished, at another academic lesson not grasped, help us first to seek you, to send up a plea that you might make clear what we are to do.

Give us grace.  Let the long-suffering heart of our Heavenly Father impart a bit of its patience to us, that we might respond and not react, that the words that come from our mouth will be what is needed in the moment, not an eruption of our frustrations.

Give us discernment.  Show us how to train our children along the way.  After all, that is our purpose as parents - to show them you, not just to make them obey so we look like good parents or so that we can have a few blessed minutes of peace, but so that they can begin to glimpse the goodness and holiness and love of our God.

It's a full-time job with daily blessings and eternal benefits, yet the moment-by-moment challenges can leave us weary.  So when we need to correct the misbehavior or encourage the grumpy slowpoke or drill those math facts all over again - yet we're at the end of ourselves, - give us courage and strength to do it just one more time, and to look at this toddler, this preschooler, this teenager as made in your image, a soul that will live forever, a life we are blessed to touch.