Besides being able to walk outside without immediately feeling like you just stepped into a sauna, some of the other benefits are: our yard doesn't look like a dry patch of fire starter, flowers are in full bloom and vibrant and our shrubs out front had lots of new growth and look green and lush-in JULY. (July in Kansas is typically when you can tell who pays for landscaping services and who just gives up and gives into the heat)
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While our kiddos where on a dream vacation with the Grands for two weeks at Disney World, Hubby and I were out working in the yard. I was tackling trimming the bushes out front.
As I was using the hedge trimmer to give them a nice little hair cut, I began to wonder if this isn't a metaphor to how we parent our children. Or even how God parents us.
I wasn't changing the make up the bushes, I wasn't cutting them down to a stump, I wasn't trying to change them from a bush to a flower or tree. . .I was just trimming off some of the 'wild' growth and helping shape them into something more then what they could be if left on their own.
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In my own parenting journey, I know there have certainly been times when I've been guilty of trying to change one of my wild little bushes into a flower-or even cutting one them down to the core. It's easy to do when I decided my agenda is the correct one.
As I try (and fail more often times than not) to model my parenting after how the Lord parents me, and as I stood there trimming those bushes, I realized that never once has the Lord tried to change who I was at the core. Shape me-yes, trim back the wild growth-absolutly -but change me at the basic core of who and what I am-no.
Why would He? After all, He created me. . .my talents, my weakness, my quirks, my mind and my body. . .and then after He did He said I was wonderful. (Psalm 139)
Just like God did that for me and you, He did that for our children as well.
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As frustrating as that might feel in the hardest moments of parenting -and trust me I've had a few- but those personality traits that drive you crazy, the quirks that can be difficult to navigate-God gave your precious ones (and mine) all those, not so we could change who they are at the core, but so we could see them for the gifts they are and help shape them to be people who follow and serve and shine for Jesus.
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So, whether we're parenting a no frills, no nonsense boxwood
Or topiary crying out to be shaped like a dolphin -that takes more work and patience that every imagined possible-
That our goal isn't to change them, our goal is to shape them, so they can shine just exactly as they were created to do.
{As with most things I write, this was directed to my heart before it was directed to anyone else's -and I will never ever pose as a parent who has it all together-or somedays, even remotely together}
May you find blessings in your gardening-even on the hot, drought ridden, weed-filled days,
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