Focus on Prayer

I’ve often heard it said that some of the most valuable life lessons we learn are taught to us by our kids. Personally I have found this to be very true, and somehow it seems to be one child in particular who does most of the ‘teaching.’
My youngest son has a very determined disposition. When he was a toddler there were times, I have to admit, that I wondered what God was thinking when He gave me this particular little treasure.  I remember one morning he asked me for a muesli bar before breakfast and the only muesli bars I had were chocolate coated. Of course the answer was no, and so the battle began. He needed to have breakfast; but because he wanted a muesli bar, breakfast did not exist. The next half hour consisted of my son screaming, my throwing a muesli bar in the trash bin; my son screaming more; my throwing the whole box of muesli bars in the bin; and my son screaming uncontrollably. I put him in his room and held the door handle so he couldn’t come out. He hit and kicked the door, and on and on it went. Finally (it felt like an hour) he started to calm down. He came out of his room and calmly said, “Mummy, I want a muesli bar.” And so we started again!
I always stood firm; I always followed through; I did everything the books said to do but nothing ever worked! I prayed; I read more books; I prayed; I went to mothers groups and listened to guest speakers; I prayed; I listened to advice; I desperately prayed and I just got more and more frustrated. Nothing worked and I wasn’t even sure God was listening anymore. During this time in my life I was often depressed, exhausted and felt like a complete failure as a mother.
One day I reluctantly agreed to visit a friend’s mothers group. I remember sitting there listening to this woman and just wanting to cry, convinced I was hearing more stuff that wouldn’t work. I actually felt angry and jealous of this perfect mother of six children.
Do you know how amazing it is to meet someone who understands what you’re going through? She spoke to me about focus. She explained that a strong willed child is an extremely focused child and I needed to come up with strategies to change his focus. “Just start by putting him onto his bed when he won’t accept "no" for an answer and tell him that his feet are not to touch the floor.  Every time he so much as looks like he’s getting off the bed say ‘Don’t let your feet touch the floor.’” That was all she gave me to work with. Here goes nothing… or so I thought.
It wasn’t long at all before I had an opportunity to try it out. It was amazing! Shifting his focus enabled me to break his fixation. His focus turned from the issue at hand to his feet not touching the floor. He calmed down so much faster and didn’t revisit the issue just moments later. It actually worked! I’m convinced to this day that God sent me an angel that day.
Sometime later, God used my strong-willed son to speak to me about my own focus.  As I reflected on the times that I was in a desperate state with him and felt like God wasn’t listening, I found myself asking God why He had given me a son with such a strong will that I could barely deal with him. He showed me that those desperate times were always when I was focusing on myself and my own problems. I realized that those times happened because my focus was on my child and on the problem. I had been praying desperately but not taking my eyes off my problems. You know the saying “If you keep looking at a problem you’ll never see the solution.” Not only could I NOT see a solution, I’d actually convinced myself over time that I didn’t know how to be a good mum and that God wasn’t listening. But let me assure you, it was I who wasn’t listening.
In Romans 12:2 it says to let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. I wasn’t changing the way I was thinking or changing my focus during those low points in my life, so I wasn’t allowing God to transform me and become the mum I needed to be.
I’d love to be able to say that I’ve learned this wonderful life lesson and have gotten it all together and that I’m always focused and have become a perfect mum with perfectly behaved children, but I can’t. But I can say that I’m a work in progress! Transformation is a process. I know I get it wrong sometimes and I lose my focus; but I also know that God loves me, and nothing I do, or fail to do, will ever change that. When I’m wrong, God doesn’t see me as a failure. He just sees me making life harder for myself. He never stops listening and if I ever feel as if He has, He usually finds a way to show me that I’m the one who’s not listening and I need to change my focus.