chrafty kids: July 2006

Keep Smiling...

...something my great-grandmother, Francis Love, always liked to say.

Boy, we have had one of "those" days...
potty-training with more accidents than successes (one of those accidents being a lovely #2),
muffin batch burnt,
runninng frantically to the post office before it closes at 4:30 in a car without air, trying to coax my toddler out the door while she ponders which shoes she should wear?
dinner served too late,
another accident (this time in an upholstered chair- yikes!)

ya know, one of those... my list could go on, but so could yours I'm sure!

So I decided to search for some photos that would remind me how much it is "all worth it", especially at the end of the day when I realize how different those moments of crazy stress can be if I remember to "keep smiling". I know it's kinda sappy and cliche-ish, but it's really true. If my great-grandmother can say it when she's past 90, there must be something there!

So here they are, with those toothy grins I can't get enough of, two of my reasons to keep smiling...

More thoughts on Homemaking... a Biblical perspective

Excerpt taken from bible.org, article by Dorothy Patterson

"Homemaking, if pursued with energy, imagination, and skills, has as much challenge and opportunity, success and failure, growth and expansion, perks and incentives as any corporation, plus something no other position offers-working for people you love most and want to please the most!

In the words of Scripture, I have found a worthy challenge:

Teach them [God’s words] to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up… so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the Lord swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth. (Deuteronomy 11:19, 21)

Homemaking-being a full-time wife and mother-is not a destructive drought of usefulness but an overflowing oasis of opportunity; it is not a dreary cell to contain one’s talents and skills but a brilliant catalyst to channel creativity and energies into meaningful work; it is not a rope for binding one’s productivity in the marketplace, but reins for guiding one’s posterity in the home; it is not oppressive restraint of intellectual prowess for the community, but a release of wise instruction to your own household; it is not the bitter assignment of inferiority to your person, but the bright assurance of the ingenuity of God’s plan for complementarity of the sexes, especially as worked out in God’s plan for marriage; it is neither limitation of gifts available nor stinginess in distributing the benefits of those gifts, but rather the multiplication of a mother’s legacy to the generations to come and the generous bestowal of all God meant a mother to give to those He entrusted to her care."

Well, I think that's enough to ponder for a few days, eh? God's ways are so much higher than man's, so uplifting and inspiring, and only attainable when I humbly submit my daily tasks and desires to Him, allowing Him to transform my heart moment by moment. "The one who calls you is faithful and He will do it." 1Thess. 5:24