"May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you."
The past few years have been both exhilarating and exhausting for me. Since I was a little girl, I’ve had the passion to paint deep inside of me, but at the same time there was an equal passion to be a wife and a mom of many children.
In my high school history class my mind would wander as I doodled a fantasy wedding scene and scribbled out the names of my future children. I admit I made a D in that class. It may not be a grade I’m proud of, but my 4 children (3 girls, aged 21, 19 and 18 and one boy, 15) and husband are blessings that I am incredibly proud of.
This past spring we were at the beach enjoying a long bike ride along some magnificent paths. My son had done something that made me so angry, and as I pedaled among the Spanish moss and huge oak trees, I found myself having a conversation with God. “What am I doing wrong as a mother, Lord? Why does he choose to disobey me?” As I looked up at one point, I saw the most amazing trees. Their trunks and roots twisted and turned, yet they were strong and solid with every branch pointing up.
It was then that I realized that I had done my job as a mother and will continue to do my job to plant seeds of righteousness into my children and entrust our heavenly Father to water and nurture and grow these amazing children into the adults.
There may be times that your situation seems hopeless: Children who are not growing in the direction you were hoping, a marriage that seems fruitless, a relationship or a workplace that, like kudzu, has overgrown its boundaries and is choking you. But like me with my children, God is asking you to merely be obedient in planting the seeds, while He tends to the garden. My prayer for you is that even when the soil doesn’t feel fertile, you will continue to plant, and that your faith in Him will be strengthened as you trust Him to be your master gardener.
