Failing

I'm failing. Motherhood is giving me a good kick in the rear end right now. And not just motherhood, but my ability to do good is failing. Ugh. Discouragement is taking a deep hold on my heart lately. I had one day this past week that I couldn't have a positive thought to save my life! "Ah! are those boogers on the wall"? Scream! Scream! Scream! After days, maybe even weeks, of 3 of my children having no potty accidents, I now have a laundry room, yet again, of poopy underwear and it's enough to push me right over the edge! Aaron and I have pleaded, threatened, and begged the kids to sit like normal people on our couch. Today, Hannah chose not to follow that severe council and flipped her legs up and knocked the lamp on the floor, ending in the result of millions of tiny shards of glass everywhere.

I can't find time to serve those around me like I would like to. I can barely scrape enough time to read and study out of the scriptures. I find myself longing for some peace and quiet, or maybe even a good hardy cry, or at the very least a GIANT bowl of ice cream, but even there I am denied because of a stupid no sugar bet until April.

And to top it all off, after knowing, with complete assurity that I should home school my kids in the fall, I had a doozy of a day where all I could think of was, "I've completely LOST my mind!" "There is no way in the world I can do this and do a good job". "I'm going to ruin their life by doing this". "They are going to turn out weird, or maybe even  looked down upon by their peers in our own neighborhood." And on and on and on it went.

I often will joke by saying, "Satan is SUCH a weenie". All joking aside, he is much much more than that. He is real. Very real. And I know that the week I've had of discouragement was nothing more than the father of all lies aiming to thwart my mission, which I know to be the most important and sacred of any on the earth. It would be so easy to give in to his lies. To believe that I'm not capable of raising my children to greatness. That I will ruin them by teaching them myself. That someone else could do a much better job teaching them than I ever could. Oh believe me, I've actually wanted to believe it and don't deny that I may still have many days ahead where I may in fact believe it. But then, just when I felt the most discouraged I just "happened" upon this article. Read it. Study it. Soak it in. Almost instantly those feelings of doubt were gone. I knew, once again that I'm not in this alone. Someone much more powerful than Satan ever will be, wants me to succeed, and with Him, I will.