It really hit Ben and me that we are now in a new stage of parenting, a particularly crucial stage. Really though, every stage is pertinent. True and Brave are at the cusp of their teen years and this tween thing does feel like something else. All my bad parenting habits have become even more glaring. My bad habit of being quick to anger and slow to speak is coming back to haunt me full force, and I better learn fast how to be slow to anger cause otherwise this is all going to go south real fast. As mom, I know I kind of set the tone at home, so I really need a lot of  “tuning my heart to sing thy grace.” This means I ought to be spending lots of time in prayer and reading God’s word. I won’t survive if I’m not feeding my soul. In addition, I must intentionally go about my day depending on God and not trying to control everything myself (hard for a control freak like me to do).

There’s a lot of emotions going on at home, especially for my biggest girls, and I can see the changes in them and between them. I’ve been their mother (and obviously, still am), but now is the time where they also need me to be their friend. Ben and I have spent the last (almost) 12 years setting the tone, rules, routine, expectations, but now, during this particular stage, I’m learning they also just need me to be their friend. They need me to listen and talk through things instead of simple tell them things. So we’re working on it, we aren’t doing it perfectly, and they’ll be lots of messing up along the way, but I’m glad these mess ups point all of us to the cross. It always gives us an opportunity to talk about how we can’t do it, but we can trust in Jesus Christ who did.