With the holidays over, we are officially back in the trenches. Juggling is an essential part of life in the trenches. There is simply no better analogy for trying to manage lessons, grading, planning, laundry, cooking, cleaning, music lessons, music practice, church obligations, husband support, emotional health and well-being of children, spiritual growth, referreeing of said children, and any number of other unexpected events without having one or more of them crash into your head, which of course only disrupts your rhythym to such an extent that you end up buried underneath the lot. Excavation, naturally, takes exponentially more time than the slip ever did and we end up wondering why days, months, and years of this leave us looking like shell-shocked hags asking where the time went.
Yet, when an outsider looking in might suggest that sending the children to public school and reclaiming your life might do you a world of good, the hag transforms instantaneously into a ferocious lioness protecting her pack, snarling at any who would dare to suggest abandoning all that she holds dear. For in truth, while the above list may seem mundane, they are the accoutrements of priorities in a life… the outward visible works that result from tightly held values, faith, hope, dreams, some of which (if not all) often stem at their root from a deep desire to grow in godliness. Priorities which are worth all the sacrifices, pain, and suffering that a life of service can hold.
The trenches are much like tea bags, or the proverbial crucible… heat is applied and the true contents are revealed… either to be purified and strengthened bringing good to all those around them, or to be scorned and tossed away… forgotten along with the rest of the days refuse.
The heat is still on… I pray that at days end, I am not found among the latter.
