When You’re Tempted to Be Discontent
Megan Breedlove 
You can’t please everyone.
This is especially true when you are serving dinner to your children. With each child you have, the odds increase that somebody isn’t going to like what’s served. Even if you only have one child, it’s entirely possible that what he or she liked the last time you served it may get a very different approval rating this time.
So, if you’re like our family, you have had to try to teach your children how to be polite about something they don’t like. Of course, your kids will put their own spin on your instructions, and you will wind up hearing comments like this recent one from Ellie, when I had prepared a ham-yam-pineapple dish: “I really like it. Except for the ham. And the yams. And, well, the pineapple.”
Or this one from Jessica: “Can I have a cheese rollup too? Except without any cheese, but with peanut butter.”
Kids in general (though there are certainly exceptions) seem to have a relatively narrow range of likes and dislikes related to food. If what you serve falls between those parameters (which, by the way, change frequently and without warning), all is well. But if not?
To paraphrase a slogan I recently read on Facebook, “There is no fury like that of a toddler whose sandwich you cut into squares when he wanted triangles.”
Kids can be pretty picky sometimes. If your children aren’t, and will actually eat things like onions and mushrooms without implying that you are trying to kill them, then you are truly blessed. But for most of us, the truism “Children are picky eaters” will, indeed, ring true.
Unfortunately, you and I as moms are sometimes equally picky in terms of what we want out of life, and even out of God. God offers us something that is perfectly good for us, and we want to modify it or refuse it entirely. It’s one thing to make our own choice when God lets us choose, which He does sometimes do. It’s another thing entirely to act as if God must fashion our circumstances according to our demands.
We are not the ones in authority—the ones with perfect knowledge of everything, past, present, and future. We are not the ones capable of determining what’s best for us, or what’s necessary for God’s plan for our lives to work out right. Yet we act as if God has done us a disservice by allowing some unpleasant circumstance into our lives.
I’m not suggesting that we should never pray and ask God to change our circumstances. Even Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, beseeching God to stop what was going to happen if it was at all possible. The Apostle Paul prayed three times, asking God to remove some unnamed thing that was tormenting him. At various places in Scripture, we are commanded to pray or to bring our requests before God.
The problem is not in asking God to heal us from sickness or to provide for our financial needs. The problem comes when we act like God is required to please us and conform our circumstances to our liking, and if He doesn’t, we’re not going to accept them.
But who are we to determine what is best for us? Is it not rather Almighty God, who is our Creator and Sustainer?
Is there something in your life right now that you’re refusing to accept from God’s hand? Something where God has told you, “This is the way it has to be for now”?
Don’t fight Him. Nothing good can come of striving against the Almighty. You will lose—and you will miss out on the blessings you could have had along the way.
Job 38:18—Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. (NIV)
Isaiah 55:9—As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (NIV)
Isaiah 29:16—You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?
Sometimes, having a good attitude is hard.
Early that morning, my husband dressed Timmy, our two-year-old, in shorts and a short-sleeved, navy blue polo shirt. Timmy looked neat and clean (and handsome, I might add). But only a few hours later—by midmorning—the front of Timmy’s shirt was no longer pristine.
I have been blessed with wonderful in-laws. They love me deeply, and they show it. They also pour out their love on my children.
In order to make the week special for her, too, I decided that each day the older kids were at camp, Jessica, Timmy, and I would do something Jessica considered special. On the first four days, we did things like riding a miniature train through the largest city park (and stopping to buy popcorn halfway through); going out to eat; going to Bath & Body Works, smelling the different scented products, and buying Jessica some hand sanitizer; playing games; and going to one of our favorite parks that has a sandbox.
At twenty-seven months of age, Timmy has begun to tell jokes. For quite some time now, he’s loved to do things that make us laugh. He still does. But now, he’s added a new skill to his repertoire: joke-telling.
I’ve heard it said that the longest 18 inches in the world is the distance from the human mind to the human heart.
The cards were decorated with hearts, flowers, and stickers. All over them—both inside and outside—were messages of love and uplifting sentiments such as, “World’s Best Mom!”