A Cheerful Heart is Good Medicine

I don't think that I have quite felt that I needed to really understand how a cheerful heart is good medicine until yesterday. I have been really have a tough time lately and it stems from several things. Yesterday the source was my children.

We struggle with issues of cleaning up. If you've ever experienced things little girls love, it would involve Polly Pocket dress up clothes, miniature shoes and dresses that an ant could wear. Not to mention play kitchen food, plates, cups, fake french fries and doughnuts. Little People animals and cars and baby doll clothes. This is reality for me right now. I used to think it was a dream, I have now succumbed to the fact it will be reality for me for a long time to come. I am not trying to bemoan it, I am just willing to admit where I am in all this.

I am sinking...into a deep abyss of reality.

After rest time yesterday the girls began to clean their room. The two oldest share a room and it is a constant mess, so cleaning on a daily basis is necessary. Then they were told to focus their attention on the playroom, A.K.A. my living room. Never have I been more tempted to refinish my musty, cobweb infested basement to make room for a playroom! Anyhow after several minutes of laughter and sounds that were not related to cleaning I came into the room to find the girls playing around instead of keeping with their task. Other events had led up to this moment but I walked back into the kitchen to grab two trash bags. I went back into the living room and handed the girls the bags and told them to clean up EVERYTHING that was on the floor and put it in these bags. They thought it was a great game.

After they were done I told them to put their shoes on and take the bags outside to the garbage. They happily skipped out to the trash can just as their daddy pulled into the driveway from work. I couldn't hear the exchange but I watched from a distance as he asked what they were doing. He told me later that they were giggling as they told him what had happened and how mommy told them to throw away all the toys they had just picked up off the floor. It hadn't phased them a bit. Probably because some of the toys were their little sister's.

I was tempted to go back out to the garbage and take the toys out like I did in a past situation. But I thought this time I would stick to my guns. As I look out the window now I can see where the garbage man has emptied our can and left it by the side of the road. So who was this lesson really for I ask myself? I think that I am more bent out of shape than they are. They don't care about that stuff. I do, because I know where those toys came from and to prove my point I could have given them to someone who might have appreciated them more than my girls did but instead they will be shipped to some landfill.

The Lord pricked my mind all night last night with a verse:

"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones."
Proverbs 17:22

I don't think that I have a crushed spirit over this, though I think that my attitude wasn't very cheerful. Definitely I think my girls need to learn a very important lesson from this but to get this upset about it isn't teaching them anything. Attitudes can change a heart and I certainly can see that I need a heart change and maybe time to settle myself down.

Parenting can be rewarding but sometimes it can be tiring! Pregnancy hormones aside, I am beginning to see how the Lord is getting my attention Himself. What do I have in my life that needs to be thrown out? Those things that do, I probably wouldn't be that upset about if they were gone. Now I just need to figure out what those things are and this time make a pile for the Salvation Army instead of a landfill!