Jeni Wants to Be a Tree

Sometimes I think, just for a moment, that God must have made a mistake by giving me so many blessings in the way of children.  I have friends who are more organized, more energetic, more beautiful, more godly—why do they not have seven children (and a frog) instead of me?  But then I remember that “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty,” and I know that God has chosen me—weak, sinful, lazy, disordered me—to show the truth of not being able to boast in His presence.  And believe me, I have nothing about which to boast. 

Take lunch today, for instance.  Any one of a number of my friends, had she been in my position, would have remembered she told the children they were not to have a third hamburger last night in order that we might have them as leftovers today.  Instead, lunchtime came, I found myself on an errand with the girls to fill the gas can so the boys could finish mowing, panicked about not having anything prepared for lunch, completely forgot about the lovely hamburgers in my refrigerator, and bought pizza.  Not that the kids minded eating pizza on a Wednesday, but it was just so stupid, and unfortunately typical, of me.

And yesterday, when I spoiled the end of a perfectly delightful day at the Farmer’s Market by taking out my frustration over having-spent-a-large-percentage-of-my-monthly-grocery-budget-within-the-first-three-days-of-the-month-for-such-essential-items-as-pomegranate-juice-and-orange-peppers on my children. 

And in acting as though I care more about the state of my bedroom floor than the state of their souls.  Ouch.  That one really hurt.  Because I don’t care more about the state of my floor than my children, but I’m not sure they are daily aware of it. 

Here’s to a better rest of today, and a better tomorrow.  Because although I cannot boast in my activities and achievements, I can be sanctified.  I can do better.  Not in order to boast in me, but in God.  Like a friend of mine wrote so many years ago after a year of being told only…well, suffice it to say that she wasn’t getting a full theological meal… anyway, she wrote, when meditating on Psalm 1:  I can be strong.  I can be a tree whose leaf does not wither.  And it was an epiphany for her.  and me.