Thank God for the Mess!!

I was sitting in my living room this week when the walls started to shake.  The pictures on the walls were falling off the nails.  My husband was not home at the time so I had to assess the problem myself.  I waited a few minutes and the shaking stopped.  I thought, "Wonderful!  No more problem!"  Ignoring situations is my way of dealing with things.  Five minutes later when my furnace kicked on the shaking started again.  I went down to my laundry room where my furnace was located and saw that it had black smoke billowing out of it. (That's not good!)  I went back upstairs and sat on the couch.  My husband would be home in a few minutes and I would let him deal with it.  After all, if I can't see the problem - it will go away, right?  As I sat there I started to smell gas fumes.  Now I couldn't ignore it.  I grabbed the kids and headed out of the door.  I looked back almost positive that my house was going to blow up any minute.  We were all in our pajamas and I thought to myself : "These aren't even my favorite pair.  If I am going to be left with only the clothes on my back I wish I would have changed first!"  We took shelter in the gymnasium of our church while we waited for my husband to get home - in our pajamas.  And of course it was full of people.  There was a basketball game going on.

The next day the repair man came and fixed it.  He informed us that we were lucky the whole house didn't catch fire.  In the process of repairing it everything in my laundry room got caked in black soot.  I had just recently painted and remodeled that room.  So you can guess how I have spent many hours today.  Scrubbing and re-scrubbing EVERYTHING!!!  I look a bit like the chimney sweep from Mary Poppins.

I was frustrated!  Very frustrated!  Until I thought about how lucky I was to have things to scrub.  You see God reminded me of several friends of mine who just recently lost everything they had in a tornado in Washington, IL.  That is the town that I grew up in.  As I follow them on Facebook I see the struggles they are having building back their houses from the ground up.  They are having to list every item that they owned and research replacement prices for new items for their insurance companies.  Can you imagine the headache of that?  Yet they are not complaining.  They are thanking the Lord that their lives were spared.

So today, I will scrub each item with joy, because it very possibly could have all been taken away in a fiery explosion.  And I will remember that in every trial I face, someone has it worse than I do.



A blessed mess,
Rachel

I Think That I am Going To Start Playing Favorites!

I try to be fair.  I try to treat each of my children equally.  At Christmas they each had the same amount of gifts. If they want to run errands with me, I take them all so that no one feels left out.  If I buy one candy from the store, I buy them all candy from the store.  If one child gets to sleep in my room because they are sick or having a bad dream then I will have roommates for the next 3 days so that everyone gets a turn.It takes a great deal of effort for a mom to be equal and fair to all of her children. I have never wanted any of them to feel like they are left out or that I don't love them as much.  I think that is every mother's goal.

BUT IT IS NOT WORKING!!!!  Let me explain.  This Christmas my oldest daughter wanted mostly gift cards to her favorite stores in the mall.  That worked for me, so I bought them and put them in a card for her to open on Christmas.  Cards are always handed out last after all of the other gifts.  She had opened many gifts from other family members and a few small ones from us when the card was handed to her.  Inside the card I wrote a message.  I told her we would go to the mall together just her and I and spend a few hours on a mommy daughter date so she could use the gift cards.  I saw my daughter light up.  She put the gift cards in the pile of presents and read the card again.  She looked over at me and I could see it in her eyes.  She felt special!  It wasn't the gift cards.  It was the time spent alone with me that she was so excited about.

You see, in my attempt to be fair and equal all of the time so that no one felt left out - they all felt left out.  No one felt special.  They felt like the time that I devoted to them was out of duty because I had devoted time to one of the other kids and had to equal everything out.

I realized then that I need to change my style of parenting.  I need to pattern myself after the way that God cares for His children.  Remember the song "He loves me like I was His only child"?  That song is so relevant to our relationship with our Heavenly Father.  Just think about how many Christians there are in this world yet we still can have such a close personal relationship with him.  Not every Christian makes the same amount of money or drives matching cars.  And when God blesses one Christian He doesn't bless every Christian so no one feels left out.  Yet because of our closeness to Him, we don't get angry because we know that He loves us and He has blessed us in so many ways before.

That is how I want to parent.  I want to have such a relationship with my kids that they don't feel left out or angry when one of the other children gets blessed because they know that I love them and they know that they have received blessings many times before. I want them to feel special  I want them to sometimes feel as if they were an only child.

So that is why I am going to start playing favorites - with all of them! 

Blessed,

Rachel