when love grows

(This post is brought to you by patience, the fourth fruit of the Spirit...my backspace button is not working on my laptop and I now realize how much I rely on this key. Seriously. Try typing anything without using your backspace button. Only hunting and pecking could be slower.)

When Friday embraced Saturday, Brie crept in our room. She whispered help, an accident caused by a back-to-school virus (I'm sure), needing a mother's attention. The kind of mess requiring a battle plan.

Forty minutes later we both were back in bed. 

Yet through the smelly mess of it all, I wondered at the calm attention I gave to the work and the lack of fatigue usually accompanying a midnight waking and my own body battling a cold virus. With each task I patiently labored, on my knees, with hands full and a heart full too - gratitude rising above these grimy circumstances.

I thanked Him for bleach, and rags and towels - we who have so much, there's enough left over to clean messes. I thanked Him for running water, hot running water, and washing machines, and mops and buckets and everything that makes these messes manageable.


Could this calm and peace and praise be God's way of revealing charted growth? His way of showing me that despite my feeling this, I am growing and He is growing all that is good within me.

I mark growth I can see; He marks the growth invisible.


I also did a lot of thinking about mothers though the ages and mothers now. The ones who don't have all these first world conveniences. I wondered how they manage messes requiring a battle plan. And what they do if their child's only clothes become soiled? Do they give their child the clothes off their own back? Would I? And am I doing what I can now to love other mothers as I love myself?

I hope so.

Gifts counted:

• bleach
• washing machines
• rags that were old clothes
• extra clothes to change into
• abundant towels
• mops
• sleeping in after midnight wakings :)
• making it through the rest of the night uninterrupted
• thinking of others

one of our sponsor kids

@ loving others : One of the ways I hope to love other mothers as myself is to sponsor their children and provide opportunities for education, full bellies and extra clothes to wear in case of midnight messes. We sponsor children through World Vision. That's Diego on the left when he was about 2. He's the same age to the date as Reese. We're not the best sponsor parents especially when it comes to correspondence and praying for them, but we're trying to change that.  And you can find your own sponsor child by visiting here.