As a young girl growing up I had a vision of the type of mom I wanted to be: I wanted to be fun, playing games with my kids, spending quality time with them, showing love, having patience, being nurturing and compassionate, being a good listener. And those qualities of a good mom sounded pretty easy to attain. I mean really, how hard can it be?

Boy, was I naïve.

I now have four girls between the ages of 3 and 12. I have found that being the type of mom I aspired to be at that young age is a lot harder than I thought. And of all the challenges of being a mom, I have found that I struggle the most with sounding loving and with acting in compassion and patience. Often my fatigue at the end of the day turns my “peaceful” bedtime routines into barking out orders as I herd the girls into bed. And when there are conflicts between the girls, I find myself yelling as much as the girls are in order to gain control of the situation. Now that they are older, I listen to the way they interact with each other and I can hear myself in their tone and actions with each other. My lack of self-control in dealing with them was contagious, and they caught it! That was not the mom that I wanted for my girls.

Over the years I really thought that I was lacking patience with my girls. If I had more patience I felt I would be a better mom. Our local church did a Bible study on the fruits of the Spirit one year, and we read the book Naked Fruit: Getting Honest About the Fruit of the Spirit by Elisa Morgan. When we came to the chapter on self-control and I read her introduction, it hit me square between the eyes that this was really the fruit that I was missing. Oh sure, I needed to use more patience too, but this was the one I was lacking even more. The author opened the chapter by telling about a busy day where she came home feeling exhausted. Then her kids need a special load of laundry for a shirt, something different for dinner, and oh yeah, a dozen cookies for a bake sale nobody had told her about the next day. You can only imagine the frustration that was building in her until she hit the boiling point when the “Monster Mom” (as she called it) came out through a tiny hole in the wall around her emotions. That is when the blaming and yelling begin.

I saw myself so much in this passage. So I committed to studying self-control a lot more. I found that it is less about “self,” and more about control. More specifically, it is submitting to God’s Holy Spirit, which gives us the self-control that we need in order to face our daily struggles. Proverbs 25:28 says, “Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control” (New International Version). I found that the hole in my wall had to do with controlling not only my tongue, but also my tone and actions in various situations. This has proven to be an ongoing battle, especially on days when I am more tired or emotional.

Life Presents an Opportunity

“The key to self-control is the refusal to allow our enemies (the flesh—including behaviors and emotions, the world or Satan) to rule or hold us captive in any way. Self-control is our wall of protection. Our lack of self-control makes us vulnerable to attack from the enemy.”

So while studying the topic, I had a situation arise where I actually remembered to use the fruit of self-control. It happened while on one of my two-hour long grocery shopping trips with my then 2-year-old, Tiffany, and my 6-month-old, Farrah. We had found our way to the juice aisle with rows and rows of bright bottles of juice. I realized that I had missed the particular bottle that I needed, so I stopped the cart and took a step or two away to get the one I needed. Then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw motion in the cart and the next thing I knew Tiffany went falling out of the cart. And as one does when one is falling, she grabbed the nearest thing—her little sister’s car seat handle—and the two together went tumbling out of the cart. So I now have Farrah screaming and crying still strapped in her tipped-over car seat, and Tiffany crying on the floor. My first instinct was to go over, grab Tiffany and say, “What in the world were you doing?! Why were you leaning out of the cart?! Why did you grab your sister?!”

But as I turned, the word “self-control” came into my mind, and I knew this was my opportunity to use it. At that moment I focused all my attention on them, not being concerned with what the others in the store were thinking of me as a mother. I first went to Farrah in the car seat and got her turned upright again. After examining her and seeing that she was fine, I set her to the side as she continued crying. I then went on to Tiffany and helped her to her feet. The look in her bright blue eyes was one of fear, not knowing for sure what her mom’s response was going to be. I looked her over to be sure she was okay, and then I took her in my arms and gave her a hug. As I did this, I could feel and see the fear melt away from her. She calmed down quickly and began to apologize for what she had done. She said: “Mom, I only wanted to touch the bottle of juice. I didn’t mean to fall out of the cart and pull Farrah down. Is she okay?” It was a teaching moment for both Tiffany and myself. This instance showed me that by controlling my emotions, my actions and tone were much more loving than they would have been normally. And Tiffany’s response to me was also much more loving and cooperative than it would have normally been.

I found a quote by author Beth Moore, who said: “The key to self-control is the refusal to allow our enemies (the flesh—including behaviors and emotions, the world or Satan) to rule or hold us captive in any way. Self-control is our wall of protection. Our lack of self-control makes us vulnerable to attack from the enemy” (Living Beyond Yourself, Beth Moore, 2004).

Satan uses our lack of control over our emotions to cause hurt to others. Why does God want us to have self-control? Because it is a part of the very nature of God. He is controlled, disciplined and consistent. The Holy Spirit can bring that into our lives as well if we allow it to work within us.