Daily Struggles

As I go through each day's set of difficulties, I often wish I had someone here with me to guide or coach me through my tasks, attitudes, and struggles. I was pondering this today, as I washed dishes with my son(who is 4). I struggled all day to try to figure out what to do with these children, get my own work done, try to get them to help me some, try to think about what needs to be done tommorrow etc. I struggle constantly to find a balance, and quite frankly get bitter and frustrated as one day melts into another, and the struggle just seems to get harder, with no clear cut answers. I struggle to understand my thoughts--I need a sounding board to hash my thoughts out on and make sense of them. I was thinking, how nice it would be to have someone at my elbow giving me that sense of direction, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder (or mouth)when my temper starts to rise. Ready to give me sound guidance at the moment that I need it, and it occurred to me what the process of parenting IS. I had 18 years at home with a mother and a father. I had their years of priceless wisdom at my fingertips 24 hours a day. I had their understanding of the scriptures at my fingertips, had I cared to ask them. I felt at that moment that I wish I could take back all the years of peer-chasing, and chase them, instead. I wish I could take back all the years I spent hours working on sketches that ended up in the trash, and instead learn self-control, and willing self-sacrifice. I wish I had had the presence of mind to probe my mother and father for their experience in life and how they coped over the years with anger, lonliness, bitterness. I wish they had been brave enough to see my faults(I was a goody-two shoes, and self-righteous to boot), and tell me of them, and call them sin.
I feel that there is a whole season of living that God created and put there for my benefit, and that somehow I missed the whole point of it. But now that I have my own children and household to manage, all their education to execute, my own brain to continue to train and guide, I feel like there are years in my past that are just empty, filled with nothing that will come back to aid me in these moments of difficulty. I sincerely wish I had done things differently. I sincerely wish I had taken the time when I had it, to be more prepared for where I am now.