Balancing Grace and Accountability

 By: Onehappymama

We are a team, and a pretty awesome one. What one of us has as a weakness, the other makes up in strength. Throwing a baby in the mix has brought a whole different level of learning about eachother. My biggest struggle is finding that balance between keeping my household running smoothly, and giving more parental responsibility to my husband. Don't get me wrong! He is an amazing father! I have heard so many other "men" brag about how they've never changed a diaper, and panic if they have to spend more than an hour in charge. My husband has done so much with all of those aspects, as well as making quality time for baby M.

My struggle is with his time management and his "it'll be how it'll be" philosophy." Proper sleep and consistency is such a vital component of a child's brain development. Something that is so important to me is that baby M is going to bed on time: 8PM. Simple, right?  With my husband's difficulty with time management, bed time turns into 9, 9:30 on evenings that I'm not home. I'm working on being more flexible, and am now able to compromise with the occasional 8:30 bedtime, but 9:30 is robbing baby M of an entire hour and a half of sleep. Sleep that may or not be made up (if he decides to sleep in). The icing on the cake is that as a stay at home mom... it is a ripple effect into the following day: catching up to get him on schedule, dealing with extra moodiness, changing plans that I had made for that day... When mama isn't happy, nobody is happy.

I want to be transparent here, it drives me crazy! My biggest difficulty is giving my husband some grace and rolling situations off of my back, but also holding him accountable as an adult who is responsible for another who is incapable of making important choices for themselves. I'm writing this at 11PM, and that little peanut is up and awake as I speak! I know my husband flips the off switch from what he calls "lectures." I want to be able to coach him in a loving way, and am still working on this. Sometimes my frustrations get the best of me, and I am not so graceful with him. Words and a tone of disappointment only make the situation worse. 

Hoping that though this journey of marriage, I can learn quickly the balance of grace and accountability. Focusing on this verse to meditate on, "Be completely humble and gentle; Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace." Ephesians 4:2-3