“While dad is the leader in the house, a mother sets the tone.
The hours her children spend in her presence will have a lasting influence on their lives.
They will become largely what she makes them.
She faces the noble challenge of molding their young lives for eternity.
Motherhood is one of life’s highest honors, and one of its heaviest responsibilities.”
-R. Strauss
The cookie dough spilled over the edge of the stainless steel mixing bowl. Dirty bowls filled the once-clean sink, mocking me with a “wash-me-now” attitude. A full dishwasher still needed to be emptied for the day. Breakfast was not yet on the table for five hungry, restless children and the routine of homeschooling needed to get started – 10 minutes ago. A dirty spatula and a few used spoons, sticky with sugar and egg, lay by the side of the stove, two cookies sheets were laid out and the man of the house was scurrying about, still in his pajamas, whisking up a batch of homemade cookies. [Please understand, this man does indeed enjoy baking! I did not force him to bake.]
You would think I would have been grateful.
After all, we needed snacks for our girls. And what dad wakes up to make cookies before going to work? Not many. I know that, and yet … I was still ungrateful. And unloving. Why? Because I appreciate starting my day with a clean, orderly kitchen, I like to start the morning with a fresh, organized, clean slate and most importantly [and selfishly?], a shiny sink … I like to start homeschooling on time so it all falls together nicely with nap time schedules of the little ones. And couldn’t the baking have taken place in the evening [hydro is cheaper then, not to mention] when it would have been less intrusive? With all this cookie dough happening, the morning routine was certainly going helter-skelter.
So I complained … not out loud – okay, a little bit out loud – but a lot in my heart. My attitude was grumpy and my countenance was not grateful.
Even now, as I read that, I realize how selfish that sounds. And it was, it was wrong.
My ungrateful attitude against my husband was a character flaw I certainly wouldn’t want to see in my own children. We daily teach them character training in their homeschool and life studies and yet I was showcasing a position of selfishness and stubbornness right before their little eyes.
And then .. it hit me.
I know this truth, it’s not new to my heart, I have known it all along, but sometimes my thoughts are bogged down with clouded judgment …
I – the mother, the wife – was setting the temperature of the home … a silly as it sounds, the sticky cookie disaster really started my day off on the wrong foot – or was I just leaning on my feet the wrong way?
I knew I had to stop it.
A slight adjustment, a humbling prayer of repentance and a grateful heart changed it all … the ripple effect of a choice to not complain was a lesson quickly learned for this [shameful] wife.
Thank you, Lord, your patience … how often I forget how very, very patient you are indeed with your own children.
Let my attitude set the proper temperature for the home …
and while sweet praise music gently and quietly sings my youngest baby to sleep …
let those same truths abound in my own heart … for love is patience and forgiving and gentle and rooted in a caring character …
and I have learned that the only way to adjust that temperature [even if you are rightfully upset] is by ensuring my heart, my life, is daily directed in the Word of God … for I am only human … and I fail and grumble and find a silly reason to complain over bits of chocolate chip cookie dough marring a clean kitchen floor …
…as wives and mothers, we can easily set the attitude of our home …
Indeed, we unknowingly set the temperature for the family …let it be warm, loving and full of grace.
“A father may be its head, but as many others have suggested, she [a mother] is its heart.
Her emotional state will often become the condition of the entire household,
and even the youngest child will absorb the effects of it …
…That should be a sobering realization to mothers,
and a challenge to examine carefully their attitudes and temperament.
A change for the better will have a profitable effect whenever it comes.”
by Gigi
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