braving the ugly

There's much ugliness in this world and much in me. The ugliness spilled forth last night; its marks still lashed upon my soul this morning.

It's easy in this world to put up pretty pictures and capture good memories and gloss over challenges. But it isn't the truth of day in, day out living. It's hard to write the ugly. It's hard to admit in black and white, soul-bared that sometimes I'd rather run away that face another day of failure at motherhood. That words of hate directed toward my children threaten to spill from my tongue. Worse still are the pricking thoughts of life was so much easier when we had less children. Horrible, terrible, unwanted thoughts.

It's hard to face the ugly in black and white. But I tire of making light of the hard times or editing them out altogether. It just isn't real.

What is real is that I have these thoughts and I have a choice. I can choose to agree with the thoughts I know are planted there by the enemy or I can choose to take them captive and make them obey Christ as God encourages us to do.

(face palm) Why did I not remember this last night in that moment where I clearly saw the choices before me: laugh along with the kids as they piled in the car to greet Dave or become angry and self-righteous because it felt like they were trying to foil my plans yet again (!!!) to establish a lovely, calm bedtime routine?

Ugly looks ridiculous in black and white and pride is peeking between these lines.   

If only the ugly could be erased as easily as these words by the backspace delete key. Ironically, the backspace delete key on this computer no longer works and, thankfully, God never enabled that key in life.

Instead, He invites me to yield my heart and the ugliness of my life to His transforming work.It is the greater grace of choosing to press on in Him.

That is my choice for today.