Wednesday, March 1, 2006

keepin me humble

I was over at granolamom6's blog and she talked about how her toddler's behavior keeps her humble. I can so identify. In fact it seems like whenever I start to feel a bit prideful about my abilities as a parent, God uses my children to remind me that I am still a very cracked pot.

Wednesday evening, for example. Our church held a revival this week, and after each service we had refreshments in the fellowship hall. During this time, my husband and I were visiting with a friend at our church. He was very complimentary of our family and supportive of our decision to homeschool. As he was sharing about how pleasant and well-mannered he found our children, I'm starting to feel just a wee bit... well, prideful. After all, my kids did sit through four nights of revival. My oldest even took notes! And they dressed up, unlike some of the kids there who looked like they'd just rolled out of bed. And, really, it is a wise choice we have made to educate our children at home rather than abdicating our responsibility and sending them through the gates of hell into public school. Yep, I am a quite the godly woman. Yessiree.

Oh, how the tiniest seed of pride can grow and grow.

So, as I sat there feeling so satisfied, my 8yo daughter runs up to me and exclaims:

"Mom, Elijah just knocked a big hole in the wall of my Sunday School classroom!"

What????

I went to see what had happened and sadly, her report was true. My polite, well behaved, well dressed, homeschooled son had disobeyed me by going upstairs, running around in the unsupervised classrooms and ultimately crashed into a wall, leaving a very large dent in the drywall. I was angry and embarrassed and humbled.

The church was very gracious about the damage. Later that evening, as I was mulling over the incident, I thought about how ironic it was that I was informed of the problem just as I was basking in the praise of our friend. Obviously, I was not pleased that my son had disobeyed me by going upstairs or that he was running around the church like a wild man. But what a reality check. Any "good" that my kids do is not my doing, it is God working in them. I should never allow myself to take credit for the work that He has done. All of the glory rightly belongs to Him and Him alone.


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