...until Christ is formed in me.

Parenting is undoubtedly a sacrifice. The sacrifice I loathe to offer the most is my time. Time that used to be used to browse and peruse my favorite stores without any concern for time or what to cook for supper or if I needed to buy more pull-ups. What is required of me as a mom is taxing. It is somewhat reminiscent of being pecked to death by small chickens.

That's not even the hardest part. Really, it is nothing compared to being formed into the kind of parent that models grace and teaches spiritual truth to my kids, more by my actions, and less my mouth. I read once that change starts with the parent, then goes to the child.

Ouch.

If there was anything I'd have liked to have settled before I had kids it'd be this issue. I'd have liked to have mastered long-suffering, and how to not yell when I'm frustrated and over-stressed. Also, how to be both firm and gentle at the same time. How to discipline and give grace instead of punish and exasperate. How to answer my kids' hard questions about what God's voice sounds like and why they never hear it. I'd have liked to reach a certain spiritual level where I don't hurt my children because of my ignorance or lack of victory in many areas. I would have liked to have been more free. So that I could love them better. Instead of working it out in front of them. Instead of failing them so much.

I'm finding out though, that God's way of victory is through my failing. Death to my flesh. So that I reach the end of self-reliance and I come face to face with what I am. I am painfully flawed. A real mess that regularly hurts the people I love, and I am completely incapable of doing anything to fix it. But I am also His daughter, "accepted in the Beloved". And I praise Him for that.

In myself, I absolutely lack any power to change, which has been evidenced over and over by my striving and trying and purposing to be different, better, nicer, more hospitable, (fill in the blank)...

I want lasting change. If I could, I would go ahead and get it done instantly instead of with all of this failing along the way and death to my flesh stuff, which makes my life messy and untidy. It is a difficult thing for me to watch myself make a mess of things as a way of preparation for victory over bondage. But I will say this. If failing and death in my flesh is the answer, I want to be the Phelps of failure, until Christ is formed in me.

Lasting change comes by Christ alone. Christ alone. Not Christ assisted. "Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty." Zech 4:6

"And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you,
will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns."

Phil 1:6

[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire] both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.
Phil 2:13 (Amplified)

God is working in you to make you willing and able to obey him.
Phil 2:13 (Contemporary English Version)