Happiness Comes from the Heart

Yesterday, was a tough day for me. Not because life was crazy, it was all internal. Unfortunately, about once a month (if you catch my drift), I get on edge and go off on my husband or sometimes my little girl for dumbest of things. They really didn’t do anything to deserve such a tongue thrashing.

Well, yesterday was one of those days.

I made it with few incidents during the day. To keep calm I turned on the HGTV show Dear Genevieve and crocheted. That changed pretty quickly when it came time to get dinner ready.

I kept forgetting things that needed to go into the recipe I was making, and Andrew had called earlier saying he was starving and asked if dinner could be ready when he got home. Sure! I usually have dinner ready by then anyway. It just wasn’t going to happen that night. I was so frustrated, and then Andrew got home and dinner was not anywhere near being finished.

*remember, for women, situations tend to get amplified during a certain time of the month*

Finally I was able to get dinner on the table. It was a vegetarian meal, and we hadn’t been at the table for 10 minuets when my husband asked me to make him something else. I understand men need meat, and I usually accommodate him. We haven’t had any meat in the house for about a week. Being on a tight budget lends more to vegetarian meals. Well, me being in that state of mind, I completely blew up on him.

Later, I developed a really sore throat, that I am sure is allergy related. My ears felt like they were on fire and every time I swallowed it felt like I had golf balls in my throat. Well, I still had dishes and food to put away and toys to clean up, and lunches to pack, and coffee to put in the maker and set the timer for the morning, etc.

I didn’t feel well and I didn’t want to do them. I was just all over in a bad mood.

What did my husband do? He went up stairs, in bed, and watched the Heat vs. the Spurs game. Left me alone, knowing I didn’t feel well, to do the dishes and everything I have already mentioned. I was seething! My mind was in the mode, “I can’t believe he ____(insert anything in here)____”

After about 10 to 15 minutes of being in a not so great attitude while washing dishes, I finally got feed up with myself. I was so tired of being in a bad mood! I’m sure you got exhausted just reading this!

I decided to have a change of mind, and heart. I started saying, “thank you Lord, for allowing me to have dishes to clean, because I have a family to care for. Thank you Lord, for allowing me to have good food to cook for my family and provisions for all of us.” I continued doing this for about 10 minutes and with every minute, I felt better and better.

Now, Satin did try and take me back down with a thought (I can’t even remember what it was now), but I literally told him, “nope! Not going to go there, thank you!”

One of the major things I thought about while I was thanking God, was the influence I was having on my almost 15month old. Here recently she has been throwing fits and throwing items across the room when she gets mad and lets big “growls” out. That is not acceptable behavior. But what God allowed me to see was, she is more than likely learning that behavior from me, not that I throw things, that is. And though that isn’t my intention, I need to learn to control my own “monthly anger” in order to be a good Christian mother to my impressionable daughter.

God is wonderful! He deals with so much more than any aggravating situation we deal with. The best thing is He is big enough to handle any of our aggravations, and annoyances, and tough situations. I am going to attempt to always call out to Him and thank Him for whatever situation I am in whenever I am feeling angry.

That is something I want to teach my daughter. She is a bit young now to understand the complete concept, but happiness truly comes from the heart, and the heart can only be truly happy when Jesus is in control.