Losing My Life to Save It

In Mark 8:35 we read:  “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”

– Christ and the Children

For awhile now I’ve been trying to get at the source of the anger I feel when I’m dealing with Andrew’s difficult behaviors.  I can feel really enraged when he is arguing back with me, or trying to point out ways in which I’m dumb or when I’ve caught him taking sweets.  His behaviors elicit a response that is out of proportion to the act.  Sometimes I’m better at taking a breath and letting the emotional response go, sometimes I do no better than to keep it at the really annoyed level and occasionally I counter with yelling and feeling like my anger has taken control.  But my ability to manage my anger doesn’t do anything for understanding it.

Conventional wisdom says I have unresolved issues that are being brought back up – past trauma that I haven’t dealt with.  I have tried to look at my past honestly, but I am one of the fortunate few in that I had a healthy upbringing.  There were difficulties – we moved really often and my dad was gone a lot of the time that I was young.  I can see that part of my desire to control things has maybe grown out of those experiences.  But I don’t feel like control is the trigger for my anger.

A couple of days ago I was reading a prayer devotional on the topic of anger, after which I took the subject to Heavenly Father.  As I was praying, the thought came to me – “am I losing my life in the service of being a mom?”  And the answer is a resounding NO.  What I am angry about is that Andrew is making demands on me that I feel go beyond what I’m willing to do as a mom.

You know that problem that a lot of moms have where they lose sight of who they are?  I don’t have that problem.  I don’t identify myself primarily as a mom, and I have lots of interests that lay outside of motherhood.  I’ve always patted myself on the back because of this.  No empty-nester syndrome for me.  I wasn’t going to have a mid life crisis where I didn’t know who I was anymore.  But for the first time I realized that I have been selfishly guarding my life instead of losing it in the service of God, who has given me this divine role to love and cherish and teach these children in my care.

That’s not to say that I haven’t been doing this – I’ve just been trying to do it on my terms.  I don’t want to be a 24/7 mom – I want to be a 16/6 mom!   What I realized is that my anger is coming out of my selfishness – my desire to fit in my motherhood duties around what I want to do, instead of the other way around.

I’m not sure that outwardly, my life will look much different as I try to change this attitude (though I might be surprised).  What I hope will happen is that I will start to feel differently.  That as I put more of my heart and emotion into my role as mother, that I will begin to lose this anger I feel when my child is telling me through his actions that he needs more of me.  Because he does need more of me – and I haven’t wanted to give it.