Reaping the Harvest

It is a welcome Saturday morning. My previous Friday night was spent looking forward to the sleeping in from a very long, full week. I can always dream can't I?




6:15 AM, I awoke to the sound of rummaging in the room. No it wasn't the cat... this time. It was the boys looking for the cat, who has become quite accomplished at hiding from their rough handling. The boys know that I don't like them in my room, so they were trying to sneak in...

       they're not very good at it.

Grunting from my bed, groggily I demand to know what they were doing in the room...and of course youngest claims he just wants to cuddle with me.

Yeah right.

Where do they learn this? How easily they continually slip into excuses that have nothing to do with the truth...how easily I feel like a failure when they do so.

Though I readily see through my children's lies, I am not always so adept at seeing through my own. 

As I lie in bed  I have such an overwhelming sense of not being able to rise to the occasion of motherhood. This job of trying to instill character in these boys is endless, and the harvest of all the seeds that have been sown, is sparse. I'm obviously not doing this mothering thing right...wouldn't I be seeing more fruit if any kind of impact was being made?

I have so little to offer my children or my husband on these days when I'm so tired and worn out. I guess you could say I'm clinging to a thread...because it's obvious it's not the Lord I'm clinging to right now.

It's times like these when I face the pain of rejection that emanates from myself; how thankful I am for God's unconditional love. Even though he intimately knows my imperfections, He doesn't just tolerate me, or put up with me...He loves me without condition.

As the father has loved me, so have I loved you.
~John 15:9

This love is not based on what I have done, on how good I am, or even how well I am clinging to Him today. As absolutely wonderful as that is, He actually loves me the way the Father has loved Him. He who is perfect...


and as far away from who I am, as you can possibly get.


I cannot add anything to that, and my failure cannot subtract anything from it.

It is forever settled.

Now I need to live as if I believe that...I need to get out of bed as if I believed that...

I live a certain way because of His love for me. I mother these boys because of His love for me, and I must trust... 

            that the harvest is His.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
      ~ Galatians 6:9

Often my feelings have very little to do with what is real and true.

You can't trust your feelings.
        ~Mom

My desire to please Him is so much stronger than my desire to please myself, and He loves me unconditionally.

We love, because he first loved us.

       ~1 John 4:19

Lord, you love me in spite of my weaknesses, help me use this spiritual insight you have given me concerning my own spiritual failings, to accept the weaknesses I see in my children.

Oh that I would love you more, and live this life like I truly believe that. Give me the strength to love my children faithfully, mercifully,  unconditionally...

the way you have loved me.

I do not doubt, that many children, will rise up in the day of judgment, and bless their parents for good training, who never gave any signs of having profited by it during their parents’ lives. Go forward then in faith, and be sure that your labor will not totally be wasted (Pro. 22:6).

        ~J.C. Ryle

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora