A bucketful of snails.

I hate snails. They eat everything I work hard to plant and beautify.

I've been having a blue day... I came home from Church and flopped on my bed, refusing to move. Completely spent and completely discouraged. "My life's work is a mess. Why can't my children behave like so and so's. Why can't I reach them? I am a failure, a flop. Its even worse because I spend my entire life on something I am horrible at and failing miserable in."

Husband rubbed my back. I cried. So empty. So sad.

Came downstairs to make dinner. Some sweet thing spit at me. "I'm just teasing Mom." I grimaced and mumbled sarcastically, "I am such a lucky mom." The entirety of my failure rested in those words. At the top of the stairs, Sunshine heard me and with complete seriousness repeated my words. "You are such a lucky mom."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked "Why am I lucky?" I wondered what she knew that I didn't.

"You have kids." She replied with matter-of-factness. I realized that she was parroting back to me my own words I have told my little ones over and over. How odd that they would come back to me right now.

I remember the long years of childlessness, the fullness of joy as each child entered our family through adoption, completely and 100% wanted. I look in an old journal. Sure enough. I wrote, "Midodi, If you ever get the amazing opportunity to have children, and even better to stay home with them, if you ever get the opportunity to help God nurture and guide his children, if you are ever tempted to complain, read this and know that your entire life is a blessing."

My past and my future have agreed. My focus on the negative and lack of gratitude temporarily blinded me to the myriad of blessings little people bring to my life.

Once more, I remember that we are all on an assembly line, not finished products. If I expect the car to be finished, of course I would be upset at a door that doesn't lock or a window that doesn't roll. But my JOB is to find the door that doesn't lock or wheel in the wrong place and help the master craftsman fix it. It is not the end of the world at the beginning of an assembly line. And . . . it is nice to know that I am not responsible for the finished product. My employer is. And, he is expert at what he does. He will ensure that everything on his assembly line leaves in its own most perfect form. Sometimes I just don't realize that he put out parts for a VW bug. I am trying to make a Mini Van with the those same parts. I think I'll just keep showing up to work and put in a full day. I'll give my best to my employer and leave the finished product up to him.

I watch Little Mother play with her pet snails... Slimy and Bob, Tiny and Mary. To her view, they were the most amazing playfellows. She reveled in the slime they left on her nose, their funny way of riding on each others backs, their individuality. I on the other hand execute any snails I find for the crime of eating my garden.

Same snails, two different views. One sees their beauty, another their faults. Hmmm. Another lesson from my small teachers.