Day 7: Love

Day 7. Love. Choosing that First.

This is the theme of Day 7 because I did not do so well with it on Day 6. If you remember, yesterday's theme was modeling... and it caused me to get a bit more introspective and self-aware of the ways I was not being a great role model. While I was at it, I noticed that "love" was lagging behind a bit when it comes to the fruits of the spirits I show in parenting.

Don't mishear that, please... I don't think there's ever been a moment where I haven't felt love toward my daughter. But I think love is something we both feel and choose, and I noticed that I'm not choosing it first.

So often I'm choosing to-do-lists. Or scheduling our day. Or running around. I still have a lot of work to do on becoming more Hands Free like Day 5's post shared about. And I think the worst part of my gap in this area is sometimes it means I choose busyness over simply loving.

Today, I chose love first...

1) When my daughter was tired. She wanted to snuggle, not run around, and I said yes.

2) When my daughter was excited. She wanted to share joy and celebrate together and I said yes.

3) When my daughter was sad. She wanted me to drop everything to comfort her and I said yes.

Love took a lot of different forms and fell in a lot of categories today. But the resounding theme was love, which looked a lot like presence. Being there for someone is such an important part of love, and I want to get better at that. Being loving might just be the number one way to parent toward Jesus (after all, 1 John 4:8 says "God is love") and I don't want to miss that.