What's On My Plate of Late

Strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow;

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside....

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

Thomas Chisolm, 1923

 From this past Sunday. LC and the baby missed the part where I said, "Everybody close your eyes for this one!" Heehee.

 CA on our day at the river Saturday.

She just MAKES.ME.LAUGH!

Nearly every day for the past week has been a birthday - in CA's world. She begged us to come down to the "party" she'd prepared, seen here. We came. And we ate our real lunch there with her.

 You know you want those love handles!

And the delicious thighs and belly!

It is easy for me to say a child's heart is more important than academics or housework or fill-in-the-blank-here. But am I willing to live that out when the heart-dealings become consuming? God is making me examine my heart on this issue lately!

If my goal is to really help the kids search out their hearts, and hold up their attitudes and behaviors to the Light of God's Word, then I must be prepared to let other things go when there's much to address in their young lives. I say that pointing their hearts to Jesus in all the conflicts and disobedience and training and discipleship is more important than housework, neatness, staying caught up with school - but do I believe this?

Ever so gently, God is reminding me that it really is okay to let the visible slide for a time, when the invisible (hearts, lives, eternity, Christ, the Gospel) truly is the priority anyway. Lately, this has meant scrapping a lot of plans and goals. That's been hard to do! There is much to address in the girls' hearts. Much. And there is always junk to be rooted out of my own life, too, and truly, when I try to teach and train the girls, the Lord uses it to teach me, too. If I say to the child, God calls you to be kind and tender hearted. Are you behaving His way toward your sister? then I must necessarily ask myself the same question. If I remind a daughter that repentance and humility are in order, do I see in myself repentance, hatred for my own sin, a deep desire to glorify God in all things? I've been praying during Lent this year about being aware of my sin. This verse comes to mind a lot: In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin. Psalm 36:2 Yikes! It's a warning to me - during a season in which God calls me to point out heart-sin-issues in others (my little people), I must be careful to choose humility and repentance myself, so that I'm not the hypocrite Jesus described, who was intent on taking a speck out of his brother's eye, when he had a log in in his own! (Matthew 7:3-4).

Whew. I'm tired now. That was about all this little brain can muster tonight!

What's on your plate of late?

Thanks for being patient as we transition!