Mark and I are reading The Mother At Home. It is an excellent book by puritan John S.C. Abbott. Our friends, Justin and Jenny gave it to us attaching their high recommendations. I particularly liked the following section and thought about it throughout the night as I got up five times to tend to sick kids. Read on.
"This self-control, at all times, and under all circumstances, is one of the most important and most difficult things to be acquired. Many parents have, from infancy, been unaccustomed to restraint, and they find a very great struggle to smother those feelings which will sometimes rise almost involuntarily. But we should ever remember that this must be done, or we cannot be faithful to our children. We must bring our own feelings and actions under a system of rigid discipline, or it will be in vain for us to hope to curb the passions and restrain the conduct of those who are looking to us for instruction and example. Many cases will occur which will exceedingly try a mother's patience (amen). Unless naturally blest with a peculiarly quiet spirit, or habituated from early life to habits of self-government, she will find that she has very much to do with her own heart. This point we would most earnestly urge, for it is of fundamental importance. Anger is temporary insanity."
In the sing-songy word of my friend, Amanda, "CONVICTION!!!"
3 comments:
Yikes....I really want to read that book...is it in the bookstore? Sorry you have sickies!
I don't know if it is in the bookstore. But it is worth getting, for sure.
However (and you'd knew I have a "however"), God works IN SPITE of our lack of self-control. We are never going to get where we should be, and no matter how good our earthly parents are, or our parenting is, we are still sinners.
Oh, I must go. I need to yell at my son.
M
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