One Snowy Day…
Over the weekend, my littlest girls savored an afternoon in Grandma’s backyard. They transformed drifts of white into a chilled kettle of delight. Winter delicacies took shape beneath their mitten-clad hands as they swirled up batches of snow soup, crystal cookies and snow-angel specials.
It’s funny how the very bricks that build our hedges can also undergird our joy. The same snowflakes that slapped my windows with frozen fury (and left me hemmed in with five rambunctious children and a slim thread of sanity) were later scooped and swirled into happy memories of frosty wonder.
When all is said and done, do the hedges I bemoan hold the blessings I desire?
Perhaps motherhood’s hedges are not unlike the drifts of winter white that currently frame my home. After all, the same hands that spill milk on my clean kitchen floor happily wrap their delicate fingers about mine as we walk side by side. The same feet that race through the grocery store without restraint inspire my tired toes to dance before my Maker. The same lips that call my name at night and pull me reluctantly from sleep’s downy silence whisper Heaven’s truth in the pink of dawn:
“Mommy, you are beautiful... Mommy, I think God’s smile is brighter than those stars…
Mommy, we can’t see Jesus but He’s really sitting RIGHT HERE…”
Do the hedges that hold also heal? Can boundaries that limit set a heart free?
Today, as I fold twelve pairs of little underwear and match thirty pairs of socks; as I read board books and battle Candyland boredom, I will ask the Lord to stir in me a love for this moment within my hedge. And as I do, I will celebrate the very things that slow me down, hold me back, and hem me in–because when all is said and done, they just may be the happy sparkles of gratitude in this mama’s memory stew.
Yes, I’m SO LUCKY to have a “professional” photographer who remembers her camera while mine is constantly sitting forgotten on the counter or stuffed in the diaper bag without charged batteries. Grandmas are great for SO MANY reasons 🙂
Love this post. That mom of yours could go professional with photos like this. LOVE the pics. Of course she had great subjects to work with.
Hugs, Aunt Jan