Oh, I'm Feeling Behind

We finished our adoption classes the Saturday before last. We talked about hurt and loss, healing and parenting all of that. We found there were best ways, and often we heard that our ways weren't the best ways.
I bought a magazine with beautiful pictures of beautiful gardens and beautifully decorated homes. I look around to see a home that isn't always beautiful and gardens with empty, brown spots.
It is easy for me to begin to count the ways I do not measure up, the ways our home doesn't measure up, to buy into the hype that there is a parenting style that will guarantee a connected family who enjoys one another.

I forget that once upon a time, there was a garden home that had no equal--beautiful, lush, safe, perfect. In that same once upon a time there was a Father who had no equal--perfectly different from everything else. And in that perfection, once upon a time, there were two people given to one another, created perfectly, without defect.
And they fell, those children once upon a time, fell.

Perfect homes and perfect parents do not guarantee perfect children.

That perfect Father, though, didn't quit, like I am tempted to do.

• The children are bickering. . .I'll deal with it later. 
• The laundry is piling up. . .there is still clean underwear.
• The house is a mess. . .I'll do it all myself and become a raging maniac in the process.

No, that perfect Father, redeems all that is fallen when we bring it to Him.

So when I am tempted to give up in weariness, give in to the frustration, sit on the couch eating sixteen cookies, I will seek His hand and I will count the ways He works.

::children playing loudly in the dirt::

::the tulip profusion in our front yard::

::finding a way to walk::

::and finding a way to enjoy it::

::plans and hopes::

::knowing the One who redeems::

::remembering how He works::

::praying for His redemption of my shortcomings::

::the friend who pointed out that He is familiar with all my ways means He is aware of my quirks::

::remembering I am dust and finding comfort in it::

::seeing grace unfold::

::a cleaned out basement::

::a sleeping through the night recovering dog::

::the way a chicken can make many meals easier::

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