I had decided that my life has been such a mess lately and I haven't exactly been the person that god wants me to be much less the person that I want to be. I have always thought of myself as a good person. I however, over time, let my good qualities slip into not-so good qualities.
Lent is a time of sacrifice for Jesus. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer
, repentance, almsgiving ( giving materially to another as an act of religious virtue) and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.
I couldn't come up with one single thing that I wanted to "give up" or sacrifice for Jesus. So thinking upon this for a couple days and talking with other people, I decided that there are several areas of my life that I wanted to improve to not only make me a better Christian, but also a better person. My plan is over the course of these 40 days and nights, is not to give one single thing up but to everyday improve my daily life to make it more pleasing to God and everyone else.
This is how my Ash Wednesday went....
As I was driving Lexi to school this morning, I decided to turn the blaring radio off and spend the 10 minute drive talking to her. Topic today was what she wanted to give up for lent. She knows what Lent is, and brought it up to her Nana and I the other day, which greatly impressed us both. She said "Mom I'm giving up my attitude." Not only did I almost drive into the Ohio River out of pure shock, I about cried. This is the one child of mine who has the greatest problem with 'attitude'. She is a hard child to say the least. She isn't bad, just hard to handle. Attitude would be her number one fault. I said to her, "Lexi, you know that this is a service to Jesus for the things that he has done for you and for your sins, make sure it is something that you will give 100% to". She said she knew and she still wanted to improve her attitude. I am impressed beyond belief. I hope that through this she becomes a more serving and happy child. She attends church twice a week, which I hope she will share her personal choice so that we may encourage her throughout her 40 day journey. So by my choice of being a better mom by talking with my daughter on the way to school instead of listening to the morning radio, I learned that she wants to also embark on a journey to be closer to the Lord, and I will help her anyway I can. Tonight at church she got to see
Mwangaza Childrens Choir. She really enjoyed it. She loves the pictures that she got to take with the children.
I then took Bailey and Kendall to school, thus involving my second "good deed" for the day. Not raising my voice during Bailey's morning meltdown. He has a new obsession with Smart Water. It started during ISTEP testing last week. They were allowed to bring a drink and snack everyday during the week to eat during breaks of testing. He stumbled upon the smart water at Wal-mart. I think it was due to it being a huge bottle of water. He told me the next day he needed another one, because it helped him during testing, it actually made him smarter he says, hence it's name, SMART water. So we picked up a bottle every morning of his ISTEP testing. I bought him a bottle last night at the gas station and put it in the fridge, which Kendall discovered this morning. He was not happy when he seen that she was drinking his water. I apologized and told him there would be a new bottle of water in the fridge when he got home from school. He yelled cried and protested that I ruined his day. I calmly, as hard as it was, explained to him that I wasn't home when she opened his water, and that I offered to replace it. He said some pretty mean things to me, but I didn't once let myself get upset by raising my voice. The fit ended quickly and he calmed down. By me not screaming and not letting the meltdown escalating into angry words and revoked video games, I believe that we both understood each other. He apologized for his words and I think we both felt better afterwards. Kendall gave me the bottle of water and said "Bailey can have his water back since it means so much to him". So as the good mom that I'm trying to be, and because Kendall took literally two drinks out of the bottle, I filled the bottle back up with tap water and put it back into the fridge for my son to enjoy after school. So with the money I saved by not having to buy another water, I will let him add that to the offering plate at service tonight. I doubt he will know that this magical water also contains fine Aurora tap water, but he will know he put money into the church offering plate. Problem solved.
We got ready for church service tonight, and I picked my grandma up so she could go with us. Church always seems so much more like my childhood when my grandma goes. As I was turning around in her driveway to get the passenger door closer to her front door, I got stuck in the mud. My uncle Joe had to pull me out with my grandmas Blazer. 4 kids in church clothes, stuck in the car that was stuck in the mud= big time frustration. Cuss? Nope. Want to? Oh yeah.
Service was great. Sermon coincidentally was about being a good person. So I was pleased. Kids behaved, even better.
Now I'm sitting here enjoying my 30 minutes of facebook and finishing up an overall great day.
