Every Moment Counts

The other day my first grader stayed home from school with a cold.   She looked and sounded terrible.   She was up and about, not really sick enough to be crashed on the couch all day and well enough to be bored by 9:30.   Sick and bored, with only half her normal energy level.  I had thought I would escape the bug, but by the afternoon I knew I hadn't.      

After a movie, a craft, games, a napless toddler, someone always asking for food but never eating much, constant running of interference between sick child and napless child, and a box of Christmas stuff dragged out of the closet as a desperate attempt to keep them occupied, I was ready to call it a day.   Before dinner.      

By 8 pm,  the girls were clean, fed, and snoozing soundly.   While breathing in as much steam as possible in a hot shower, I pondered the day.   I've had much harder times as a parent, but for some reason I wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment, some kind of tangible result from a day's work.   

Wouldn't it be nice if someday, years from now, my older daughter would say, "You remember that day when we all felt like crap but you did a fantastic job anyway?  Thank you for being such a super awesome workhorse parent!   I will treasure the example you set for me forever."  Realistically, she probably won't remember this day because nothing of any significance happened, at least not in an earthly sense.   

Then suddenly I was hit with a thought:  every moment counts.   Every.  Moment.   "God?  Is that you?   So if every moment counts in your eyes then I have to be a perfect parent and we both know that's not gonna happen."  

If God was sending a little encouragement my way, and I believe he was, then the basic message is not perfectionism but this:  Love is never in vain.   Every loving thing we do for our children counts, no matter how seemingly mundane.  No one else may see, but God sees and this love is impressed on their young hearts.    

A long while back I had an insight about love.   If the ultimate example of selfless love is Jesus dying for mankind, then warm fuzzy feelings have little to do with it.    He did not feel warm fuzzies when he died.   

Its easy to love my adorable girls with warm fuzzy feelings but there are times when parenting does not feel like this at all (some vomit memories come to mind).   In such times, we can look to Jesus' sacrificial attitude as the foundation of how we love our children.  Not out of drudgery, but from a  heart full of grace.