I wrote this diary entry nearly four years ago and discovered it today…I sensed it may be what you needed to read too.

….Let me paint you a picture. I am sitting, as a solitary adult, on the floor of our playroom at home.

My two year old is hitting a piece of wooden railway track repeatedly against a large plastic orange, singing ‘The Fimbles’ theme tune at deafening volume. One of my twins has just thrown up the majority of his weetabix into the box of sticklebricks (Euuugghhhh!) and the other is sobbing because he has done the mother and father of all dirty nappies. Mine is not a quiet house.

And I don’t help matters. Rather than calmly laughing this off and cuddling all my children in turn as I sweep round the room Mary Poppins-stylee making all right again “¦ I yell at the eldest to be quiet. Then I deftly remove his piece of train track – very much against his will. I pick up sobbing baby and rock him, then throw the toddler’s orange into the wooden kitchen sink in the corner. “No more banging Sam ok?” Then I pick up Ben and wipe his mouth with my sleeve, remove the crate of slimed sticklebricks, run up stairs, still with Ben in my arms, who hasn’t quite finished and proves it on my shoulder, and throw the most offensive of the sticklebricks into the shower tray to deal with later. I run downstairs, put down Ben, and pick up Tom, take him to have a clean nappy and fling shut the stair gate on my way out shouting, “I can’t do this anymore!!” Everyone is now crying. Including me.

It has struck me recently that as a parent I am often fast to anger and slow to love. I am tired and grumpy. I don’t find it easy to be deprived of sleep and still rejoice. I am NOT super-mum. I am very frail and very human. I trip and fall in endless situations every day. I regularly have to apologise to my children for letting them down. I have to keep very short accounts with God too. I am discovering parts of myself that I would like to hide and not publish. In fact, it’s hard to write this because I am ashamed that I am so far from the mother I dream of being. But, I am encouraged by the Holy Spirit to be real, because others struggle like this too.

We serve a God who is slow to anger and abounding in love. That means that anger is not the first emotion He feels when provoked by us. Or his second, or eighth. In fact He sees it a long way off and in a kind of slow motion, deliberately turns from it. God could not be accused of being slow at anything else, but He chooses to be so in the way he views anger and therefore in how He treats me. I find this mind-blowing.

He is abounding in love. It oozes out of Him. He is nothing BUT love. He never runs out of it, no matter how much he gives out. It is His very nature, His essence, His core. His first reaction. His primary emotion. Whatever I do. However rubbish I am. Whoever I let down, scream at, disappoint, frustrate or hurt.

“Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.
One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts.
They will speak of the glorious splendour of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful works.
They will tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim your great deeds.
They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.”
Psalm 145:3-9

I try to remember this as I powder my son’s pink little bottom, hug my toddler who has now found a large plastic lemon to hit instead and use “Head and Shoulders” shampoo to scrub vomit from the bricks (which works surprisingly well – shall i write and tell them??). I want to be more like God in my responses to everyday stuff like this. This is what counts, not who I am in church or on some platform. Not who I pretend to be in front of other people. But who I am as a solitary adult on my knees in the playroom, no make up on and my hair looking like it was styled by three blind men who couldn’t agree, with only my children witnessing. I want to be slow to anger and abounding in love.

What about you?