“Gosh, I wish I could be more like her. She never yells, she is so patient with her kids and never seems to blow up in anger. She’s just so gentle.”

I found myself saying these phrases after each time I would get together with my friend, Katie. I envied the way she would discipline her kids with grace, was quietly respectful of her husband and had an aura of kindness about her. Most everything she did, she did with love and gentleness. And like me, many other women were (are) drawn to her, many of us wanting to be like her. But the more I spent time with Katie, the more I realized that it wasn’t Katie that I was wanting to be like. It was Jesus in Katie that was what I was wanting more of. And it was Jesus that made Katie so gentle.

I’m not sure about you, but I struggle with being gentle, it’s not something that comes naturally to me. My initial reaction when something upsets me or when something goes wrong is to act harshly. I often find myself doing everything I can to bite my tongue, and many times I don’t bite it fast enough. And from the moment the words spill out of my mouth, I’m immediately filled with regret. And that regret usually is accompanied by my words and actions hurting someone I love.

And you guys, I’m just done.

I’m done living with regrets. I’m over the way it feels when I have to apologize to my daughter for yelling. I’m fed up with bringing my husband down with snarky remarks. I want more of the gentleness of Jesus. And I’m ready to fall into it. Are you with me?

So here are some things that we are going to tackle together this month. We are going to dig into what it looks like to be gentle and find tangible ways be just that. We are going to discover how to practice gentleness in our homes, with our children, with our husbands, in hard relationships, and with ourselves. My goal is by the end of September that we will be armed with scripture to keep us grounded and walk away with a new awareness of the gentleness of Christ and how it can change us. I hope you join me in this journey!