Hit the Pause!

My kids love the pause button on the remote! I think it's their favorite -

I'll hear, "Where's the remote??" . . . and the next thing out of their mouth is, I wanna get a snack, or I need to go to the bathroom, or I wanna go get a toy... honestly, it dries me crazy. I always feel a hint of the entitlement mentality that is eroding our society, but that's another topic for another day. ;) It did lead me down a thought process that so many moms & dads need to put into practice though, me being the first to jump in that line!

How often do you pause to asses why your son or daughter is misbehaving? How often do you pause to ask God for guidance in disciplining your little ones? How often do you pause to ask yourself if this battle, be it with your kids, your spouse or co-workers, is really worth it? I have to insert a little disclaimer here...I'm not a huge "pick your battles" kind of Momma - if it is a rule in our house, you gotta follow it! If I've given my child direction about what to wear or what to eat or how to handle something, I'm not one to just "pick the battle" and allow them to do whatever they please if the battle seems to big or might make us late or whatever. (We do work towards compromise though, if the situation allows.) So what I'm really referring to, in bringing up battles, is this, am I simply fighting the problem or the actual source of the problem?

This past Sunday, we taught on fighting the good fight (1 Tim. 6:12). Learning to choose the "good fight" takes work and moments of pause. The Holy Spirit is always at work in my life, but it's often in a moment of pause that I truly receive the clarity I need from His guidance. Often, I, and maybe you, begin a moment of pause but as soon as we feel guidance is being given, we jump into action and use it at our discretion instead of in the timing and way He intended. In reality, there is the guidance, hope, peace or word that we need being given, but immediately following is the wisdom to walk it out! IF, we take the time to hear it. 

This past Sunday we had a situation where we thought we "lost" a child during children's church. I take this very seriously, and have conveyed to volunteers to seriousness of their responsibility to make sure our kiddos are safe. In a moment {void of pause} a panicked search party formed and a bit of chaos ensued. Reality was, the child left church with his family and was on his way home for a relaxing Sunday afternoon, while folks frantically searched for someone that wasn't even lost. A lot of lessons were learned and a huge moment of pause was taken to reflect on what we should have done differently. I'm certain though, that we do this in our personal lives far more than we want to admit. We miss times of rest, times of peace, times of guidance, times of learning, times of growth because we don't take time to pause. 

When something happens in my house that turns things upside down (anger, a bad attitude or wrong decision, running late, etc) and we then realize things need to change, we say, "let's press the reset button".  We're adding another button to our family remote...PAUSE!

What do you think, do you need to begin intentionally take moments of pause? Join us in taking time to "press the pause button" in our lives!

This is one of my favorite places to "pause"!  Orange Beach, AL