Respecting The Foundation

A Growing Garden

It has always been a comfort to me to think about God choosing a garden in which to place His newly created human life. There is much to learn in a garden! Several times during every day, I find myself drawn out into my own flower garden, which has become a respite from the cares of life. Little by little, I merge with the garden, lost in thought as I move around the patchwork of pinks, lavenders, and blues on a background of soothing green--first to smell, then to touch, and then to tend. I cannot help myself. It may sound silly, but an intuitive sort of thought process takes place for me in the garden. I do not stand within the camp of people who talk to plants. To the contrary, I feel that plants have more worthy things to say to me than I have to say to them! My mind listens for answers, sometimes to questions that I did not even realize I had. This spring has been an especially helpful one, as I worked out a resolution to a problem with one of my children.

A Rose Outgrows Its Borders

About 4 years ago, I planted a Lady Banks rose to grow on a wooden arbor at the entrance to my front yard. Little did I know that the Lady Banks is as prolific and hardy as roses come. The Lady Banks quickly settled in and took off growing. It was nothing short of "dreamy" for me to think ahead to spring, and the white, wooden arbor in my front yard being covered by massive amounts of tiny white blooms amid the healthy foliage that was weaving in and out of the lattice sides of my arbor. I was dazzled by the fact that this year was promising to be the showiest year ever, with Lady Banks' long, bud-covered branches arched into the sky and then down, even sweeping the ground in some places! In fact, I was so enchanted with the blooming spectacle, I was oblivious to the increasingly burdened state that the wooden arbor was in! I guess I did not realize how much bigger my Lady Banks had gotten during the previous growing season--sort of how we humans sometimes don't see a problem getting bigger and bigger until it borders on enormous and threatens to consume us!

What? I Need to Prune?

One day while out in my garden (as usual, standing near the Lady Banks and looking up), my husband pleasantly surprised me by stepping out to join me. It's funny how we assume we know what others are thinking, and sometimes we are extremely off-base in our guessing. I was waiting for the inevitable compliment from my husband about my Lady Banks rose, when he stunned me with the comment that the rose needed pruning (now) or I would lose the rose completely and the arbor with it!! The sheer weight of all those branches was heavily testing our old arbor. My husband walked through the garden with me, complimenting many things besides the Lady Banks. Looking from two different perspectives, my husband and I were seeing two very different things when we looked at the Lady Banks. I was looking at sheer physical beauty. My husband was looking at long-term consequences. I sighed as my husband left me to go back inside. I would prune the next day.

The lesson I took from this was a good one. We had been having trouble with one of our children lately in the area of obedience and gratitude. I won't say which child--they deserve their privacy--but as I pruned that rose, I thought long and hard about what it was my child needed to be able to live within the boundaries that were truly good for him. As a mom, I tend to shield and protect and see my children only through the eyes of adoration--just as I was looking at my Lady Banks. Where this particular son was concerned, I had been accepting superficial "tokens" from him that he was repentant and corrected, when really there was some deeper pruning that needed to be taking place! I realized that while my husband oftentimes looks ahead to the fruit that will be born of current habits being formed, my motherly instinct to intervene, question, and protect has the potential to blind me to weightier matters. In the deeper part of my heart, I must admit that I appreciate the noble character which may be worked into children who must be accountable to a higher power than themselves. I also know that foundation means everything. Just as the Lady Banks needed the very arbor it was threatening to tear down, my son needed to maintain a respectful, healthy tie to the foundation that was growing him into a fine young man.

Pay Attention to Where Your Plants, and Children, Wander

I will close by saying that this little garden story is in no way meant to tell you how or when to discipline. It is merely to remind you to pay attention to the direction in which your little ones are growing. It is to remind you to pay attention to well-trusted sources who offer you an insight as to what things look like from their point of view. It is to remind you to keep a check on the soil that your children are taking root in! A garden growing lustily out of its boundaries is pretty for a time--but only until the pleasant order of the garden is completely hidden and the plants have lost their way in weeds, which can happen; and, order can be hard to restore. Trust me!

A Mother's Journal

Livin N Writin About It

Five In A Row ~ The "Heart" of our Homeschool:

Art of the Month:
"Rowing"

Quotations

"A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap."
Danish proverb

"I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand."
Chinese proverb

More Quotations

"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn from the crow."
William Blake

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget."
Louis Mercier

"A learned man has always wealth in himself."
Latin proverb

"My mother was the making of me. She was so true and so sure of me. I felt that I had someone to live for -- someone I must not disappoint. The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me."
Thomas A. Edison

"You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a Mother who read to me."
Strickland Gillilan

"The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."
Henry Ward Beecher