Shallow pool + energetic kids=cloudy day with absolutely zero chance for meatballs!
At one point I was randomly cleaning and kept repeating this mantra, "At rest time I can cry. At rest time I can cry. At rest time...". I also got the urge to rearrange the furniture in the living room, with disastrous consequences. It ended badly with my 6 year old pushing up the t.v. I was barely holding, preventing it from crashing to the floor.
I put on some music. I sought the comfort and measure of grace imparted by singing to the One who made me. I couldn't remember the words. The kids did, so I sang along with them.
Rest time did indeed arrive. I showered, an attempt to wash the negativity and 'cloudiness' from my brain. I napped in the recliner as my oldest played on his DS game system. I didn't cry.
I was itchy on the inside. Or is it twitchy? I just needed to move. I needed to do. I needed something.
There is a bird bath sitting atop a large, rectangular flower bed in the front of my house. Once adorned with purple and pink pansies and other little flower thingies (a green thumb I am not), it became a pile of weeds and brown yuck. Every time I looked out the window of the living room/home office, I saw that pile of overgrown nothingness. Everyday I was reminded of the nothing.
Carrying a hoe, a shovel and dragging a wheel barrow, I tackled the bed of weeds. I hacked away, surprised at how deep the virulent, ugliness went. I was stung, literally, by the branches as I reached to pull them out. The twitchy/itchies went away, run off by hard labor.
My sons orbited around me. Wielding shovels, rakes and any tool I wasn't using, they dug in the newly turned dirt. The two year old had a running commentary of baby babble. It was if he was describing this very important project of digging and pouring the dirt on the other side. The six year old complained, and dug, then complained some more. He is on the varsity team of complaining.
Me? I kept digging. I was finally doing something. I was doing something with real results I could immediately see.
Hours went by in an instant. People came home ready for dinner, which I hadn't started yet. I was still raking and digging and hacking away.
I stopped and looked at my handiwork in the dimming daylight. My oldest took on the task of smoothing the dirt. The youngest was digging new holes. I had a thought.
It was these children who were the catalyst for the weeds growing in my emotional garden. It was these same children for whom I began the task of 'hacking' away at my own dysfunction. Often I am struck at the depth of the roots of my challenges, deeper into my childhood and very sense of self than I ever wanted to acknowledge. I am mystified at how a seemingly nebulous occurrence, such as seeing mom in a grocery store, could pack such a sting. I am cleaning out my own internal spiritual and emotional garden.
Could it be that they, too, will be the ones to smooth out the rocky places? Are they part of God's strategy to bring me into wholeness, healing and peace? Can they be the ones who, in my parenting of them, will help dig new, healthy wells from which living water can flow?
Deuteronomy 6: 10-12 "When God, your God, ushers you into the land he promised through your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you, you're going to walk into large, bustling cities you didn't build, well-furnished houses you didn't buy, come upon wells you didn't dig, vineyards and olive orchards you didn't plant. When you take it all in and settle down, pleased and content, make sure you don't forget how you got there—God brought you out of slavery in Egypt. "
God is bringing me out of slavery. I am promised to walk into a land of emotional and spiritual wholeness not entirely of my own making. I just need to walk into it. Then I need to take it all in, settle down and be content.
He, and the babbling, complaining angels in my life, are digging the new wells.
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