Today's gift of survival: I pick one day for laundry and make it my goal to get it done by the end of that day. My laundry day is Monday. I usually get it done by, well, Tuesday. And sometimes Wednesday... But it's good to have goals, right?! Why only one day? Seems overwhelming, right? But for me, when it is done, it's done. It doesn't hang over my head all week. Once it's done on Monday (or Tuesday), I don't have to think about it until laundry day again. And to me, that feeling of freedom is enough motivation to get it done in 1 (or 2) days.
Today's other gift of survival: learning not to make a mountain out of a laundry hill. When I first started struggling with the strong-will of my child (and just to make something clear: my child's strong will is not a negative label on my part. It is an amazing part of how God created her. Our struggles come when we, my husband and I, don't know what to do with it.), my oldest brother pointed out to me something he had learned in raising a strong-willed child also: pick your battles. I took me a while to understand that statement. I didn't want any bad behavior to go uncorrected. If I didn't set her straight right away, then things would get out of control!
But it hit me one day what his comment truly meant: when you are in a situation and you have to decide whether to make a mountain out of it or not, decide whether it is a heart issue. If your child is being rebellious, defiant, disobedient, or a behavior that signifies a heart issue, then the issue must be addressed. (And again, when I say "you" I actually mean "me.") If my child is simply being irritating (kicking the back of my seat in the car, making high pitched screeching noises, leaving a pile of clothing on her floor, doing her homework with sloppy handwriting, having a consistently messy room, eating her food messily, putting her clean clothes on the floor instead of in her drawers, making her eat the disgusting food that I make, and so on - this list is very long in our house), I will usually just let it go. You see, for our strong-willed child, there are enough battles that we must pick and if we went through with EVERY battle, there would be no peace in our house.
Today's battle could have been about getting her laundry ready for me. She did a lousy job of it. But that is a battle I choose not to fight. I simply tell her to put what she thinks is dirty in her laundry basket for me to clean. If it's not in the basket, it doesn't get washed. The pile outside of the laundry basket today was larger than the pile inside. *sigh* She got started, and then got bored with it, or distracted. But I guess on the bright side, I didn't have as much laundry to do today!
My kid might end up having bad handwriting, or always have a messy room. She might have to rummage through the pile of laundry on the floor, sniff-testing to make sure she can wear it to school that day. But maybe, just maybe, she won't go through a rebellious stage (as so many people "expect" their children to do). Maybe she will have a good grasp of respecting others and treating them with kindness. Maybe she will have a living relationship with her heavenly Father. That's what matters to me. The rest aren't worth climbing the mountain for.
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