One Word New Year's Resolution

Tonight I got home from a friends house. A fellow accountant wife, whom I love, who knows the void of a missing husband in the evenings. I brought Grace home in a different pair of pants. Not the pair she wore originally. Since our vacation Grace has been slipping up in the potty department. Peeing her pants a little and not telling me she needs to go, whether by distraction or otherwise, until I notice or physically take her to the bathroom. It happened at my friend's house.

I got home and went to get her jammies and left her in the bathroom with her toothbrush to brush her teeth. I walked back in and she was standing in a puddle. "Gracie did you pee your pants?" She looked down at her feet in the puddle and looked back at me. Normally I'd try to say something calmly, but tonight, I lost it and I yelled. "Why?! Why did you pee your pants? You are standing right next to the potty!" I was frustrated and annoyed and wondering why (oh why?!) had she started peeing her pants when she never did it before. Her sweet brown eyes filled with tears and she cried. I could tell she felt awful.

We cleaned the mess, hugged it out, got in jammies, and called Aaron to say goodnight. But through it all, I was still annoyed. I knew she knew better.

After I laid her down in bed, I thought about what I said, how she cried, and how I could see in her eyes how hurt she was by my reaction. I started to cry. I made her feel awful. And to be honest it's not even her fault.

I wasn't yelling because she peed, or that she came home in different pants, I wasn't upset because she had been reverting. I was yelling because there is so much going on: home from vacation, busy season, new calling, old calling, dirty house, piles of laundry, doctor's appointments, meetings, new goals, new budget, and the now sprayed on look my jeans have.

All of those things have been churning and swirling through my mind. I feel like I'm not living in the present but living on a mental to do list constantly keeping tabs on my status. Grace has been such a trooper through everything. I've had so many phone calls with Aaron telling him, "Grace has done so well. She has been amazing." Surviving hour long waits at the doctor's office and a 3 and a half hour meeting at the church. Days where I'm constantly on the phone or emailing to set up meetings or help with events. She has been unreal in the best possible way.

But I haven't been as stellar. She'll take my hand to go play with her in her room and I sit as long as I can thinking about all of the other things I could be doing to get stuff done. I am not mentally with her giving her the time and attention she needs, and to be quite honest, deserves.

It took her peeing her pants for me to really look her in the eyes and be right there in the moment. And instead of thinking of how amazing she has been with a pretty absent parent for so many days, and using a soothing understanding voice, I yelled. I yelled a lot and made her cry hard. I didn't offer her the same patience and understanding she has offered me the past two weeks.

Life will always ebb and flow. There will be rainbows and unicorns followed by storm clouds and Eeyores. Life won't ever make sense or be predictable. But for Grace I want one thing to always be predictable, that I love her. Not just loving her in general but having her know, without a doubt, through the crappy and the good, that I love her and care for her. No amount of peed pants, or meetings, or emails, or tantrums will ever change that.

So I have finally settled on my "One Word" New Year's resolution: Love.

Not the general kind, but the specific kind. Showing the people who mean the most to me that I love them regardless of what goes on around me, or what stresses I might be having. I don't want to be governed by stress and take it out on those I love, I want to be governed by love and push aside the stress and focus on what really matters most in the moment.


You can read about the One Word resolution at 71toes and Our Hatchlings