Day of Art

Today started way too early for me. A son had a night mare around 3am. Alarm at 5:30am. I drove my husband to work around 6am and came home to go on my morning walk at 7am with my Mother in law, and due to rain, we chose to walk inside to a DVD. Kids awoke too soon. Breakfast-cooking-daughter slept in so everyone starved until 9am. Cranky 4 yr old whined and then fell asleep on me while reading a story around 10:00am. That is when it became a Day of Art. I got to practice a rarely used “Art” and so did my children. My unused “Art” of late is letting my kids have fun with messy stuff. I was able to let go (mostly) of worrying about spills and stains etc. I regularly allow Play Doh and water paints, markers and crayons, but not much more. All went well, except when my 2 year old decided to cut her hair with the “safety scissors” she was using at the time. Luckily I turned and saw her mischief before major damage was done! PTL! So each child got to pick a craft. (They All picked painting and then creative cutting.) I was able to paint an unfinished shelf for my girls’ room; while my Mother in law worked on her painting project beside me. As we finished up these projects, it was time for swimming and lawn mowing! Splashing isn’t fun for the splash-ee, only the splash-er among my children and myself included. So, needless to say, an ongoing faux pas in our pool is the “oops I splashed someone”. Well, that doesn’t go far with me. Once or twice and then it’s a “pool-time-out” or an out-of-pool-time? Anyway, you get the idea. The 2 year old is a fish, one that can’t swim. She gets mouths full of water, and it matters not. She simply loves the water just like my first born! Those two are natural mermaids at heart. Eldest boy ran out of gas in the mower before the lawn was finished and came and joined us in the pool. Soon Dad would be headed home and dinner was calling to me. As we gathered ourselves to enter the air conditioned house, my almost 6 year old bounded ahead of me with siblings here and there; I turned to say good bye to my MIL when she screamed. (My little Trinity stepped on a bee!) Big sister was there to save her by taking out the stinger and carrying her to the house as I followed holding on to the 2 year old. I doctored her up with baking soda paste on the wound and a dose of Benadryl. Dinner was cooked, served, and devoured. More swimming was done. Now I sit and type as the kids play with Daddy and I can smell popcorn in the air...mmm…

This day. This is only one day of thousands. This is the day which the Lord has made, and I will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24 This was a good day.

"There needs to be a homemaker exercising some measure of skill, imagination, creativity, desire to fulfill needs and give pleasure to others in the family. How precious a thing is the human family? Is it not worth some sacrifices in time, energy, safety, discomfort, work? Does anything come forth without work?"
— Edith Schaeffer

We certainly are called to give up our own fleshly desires in order to meet the needs of others, in humility putting their needs before our own. Do we remember to do this for those within our own four walls? Or are our “others” always those outside the home? Balance. Find the balance. As Nancy Wilson likes to say, “There’s a ditch on both sides of the road.” Meaning if we spend too much time obsessing over just family, family, family, we neglect the body of Christ, and vice versa. Find the balance, it’s out there. Blessings.