Warning: the following blog post contains bathroom-related content. My son just turned three years old.  As such, he is super into three-year-old things like riding his scooter, kicking his soccer ball, telling me about everything his eyes land on, and…the potty.  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 100 times: I’ve never learned more about my relationship with the Lord than when I became a mother.  In light of this, here are a few lessons God has been teaching me from our attempt at potty training.

Around January of this year, I started to feel different and it led to me acting differently.  I wish I could tell you now that the way I was feeling and acting was positive; however, it truly wasn’t.  I was angry, bitter, and frustrated with just about everything and everyone in my life. It spilled over into everything: work, family, friends.  I started to avoid people because of it. I put myself into a box and didn’t let myself out. I would put on a front, but inside I was crumbling. Even then, God was working in the depths of my heart and tearing down and building up – I just didn’t realize it yet.

My church was covering the Beatitudes for a few months; each week, they would highlight one line from each beatitude. In the week leading up to the verse, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy,” I was faced with a situation where I did not show mercy.

How do you feel when someone says to you, “I forgive you?”  Do you feel relieved?  Freed up?  Like you’re closer to this person than you were before?  If that’s how it feels to receive forgiveness, then how might it feel to be the one extending it?