Home-making

"Are all these your children?"

Yes, they are.

"Well, you sure have you hands full!"

Yes, I do.

I have heard it a hundred times. 

I am so grateful that my hands are full. 

I wish it no differently.

As I stood next to baby Jethro's ICU bed,

tubes going in and out all over his little15lb frame

I thought, life is so fragile, so very fragile.  

Yet, all too often we take each blessed day for granted,

living for the moment, and not for eternity.  

What else matters when your baby is struggling to maintain life,

other than making every moment count and doing your best to help him live?

I could have been an architect. God has given me a talent for it.

  I could have been a  teacher. I love teaching and even in high school excelled at it giving equitation lessons. 

But I am ever so thankful that I chose to be just a mama.

No high paying salary or career of significance holds a candle to devoting my days to caring for and training my children. 

But, sometimes, in the midst of cranky children and clogged toilets it is hard to remember. 

It is at those times that I head for the bookshelf in search of a word of wisdom or inspiration, or both. 

The precious Word of God takes precedence,

but I have some other worthy favorites that also uplift my spirits and uphold my calling. 

This is just such a one as seems fitting for the day:

"We are fast moving through this world.  

Soon all that will remain of us will be the memories of our lives.

  No part of our work will then afford such true test of our living 

as memorials we leave behind us in our homes.

  No other work that God gives any of us to do is so important,

so sacred, so far reaching in its influence,

so delicate and easily marred as our home-making.

  This is the work of all our life that is most divine. 

The carpenter works in wood,

the mason works in stone,

the smith works in iron,

the artist works in canvas, 

but the home-maker works on immortal lives. 

The wood, or the stone, or the iron, or the canvas may be marred

 and it will not matter greatly in fifty years,

but let a tender human soul be marred in its early training,

and ages hence the effects will still be seen.

Whatever else we slight, let it never be our home-making.

  If we do nothing else well in this world,

let us at least build well within our own doors."

  - J.R. Miller, Homemaking, pg 265.