Overwhelmed by My Blessings: Encouragement for Moms (Part 11)Sample

The kids are bickering non-stop and you need a whistle to stop the noise. You are settling arguments all day, judge and jury. The days seem filled with endless discord and turmoil, like the long winter when there is no sun. Will this ever change? You feel like the enemy of your children and are losing hope that they can possibly learn anything positive from you. Where is the good in all this?

I remember feeling like this plenty of days.

One day, while tending our vegetable garden, I came across a very large, overgrown cucumber. Cucumbers have to be picked daily during the hot days of summer, and though I grow them on a trellis, somehow I had missed this one.

You see, it was too low to the ground, covered by the green leaves of the vine. I had missed finding this very large cucumber because I had not stooped low enough to find it.

Could this be what happens, even with our children? Could the daily grind of our lives be covering over what is really going on in their hearts? Maybe there is fruit, and we just haven’t stooped low enough--on our knees--to see it.

Today, pray for a glimmer of that growth! Ask Him to show you just a bit of the fruit growing even in the messiness of your relationships. He will show you. But maybe you need to be on your knees to see it.

Father, please show me just a glimpse of your goodness at work in the life of this particular child that is heavy on my heart. Give me the humility to stoop low, to search for You at work when all I see is a tangle of growth, but no good fruit. I choose to believe You are there. I ask You to give me patience and persistence to not give up until I see what You are wanting me to see. May my love for this child be enlarged.