The world needs YOUR love, use it!

I have made so many mistakes as a mother. I've been quick to anger and treated my children in ways I'm embarrassed to admit. Whether that meant screaming at the top of my lungs while they looked up at me, eyes widened with fear, or moments when I've checked out so selfishly focused on an iPhone app instead of cuddling with my toddler a few inches away. I've spanked them. I've ignored them. I've treated them as less than. Those moments were terribly wrong. Of that, I am acutely aware.

But I have also learned from the mistakes and can say those episodes were shocking and they were few. I pray the few being just enough NOT to leave permanent scars. So few that they live etched only in my worst memories while carrying absolutely no weight buried under the barrels of happy memories in theirs. I pray my children only have room in their hearts to keep the images of their mother who was fearless and endlessly kind. 

The average moment with my children is spent hugging, kissing, soothing, cooing, cooking, calming, laughing, and cuddling. It's also spent silently bruised and battered. It's spent drained by the end of most days reeling from the countless directions I've been pulled in. I work full-time. I am a wife. I am a writer. I AM A MOTHER! I am stubborn and I am passionate. I am like everyone else desperately hoping not to screw up my children.

Just today I held my 6 year old while whispering in his ear as he drifted into sleep... "Only love lives inside you... the world needs that love, so use it!" I continued softy, "show this world all the love inside you, show them the goodness you're made of." I felt my son breath peaceful. I felt my words resonating in his soul and manifesting in his future. I felt all the moments I failed as a mother melt away.  I felt like this the mother I was meant to be. A mother who is flawed while committed, impatient and relentless, battered while victorious - a mother giving the world the goodness that's inside her!

I can only teach love by showing love. I can only show love by giving love and the same with forgiveness. I have forgiven myself for the imperfections all the while inviting my children to forgive and love themselves, too.