Today's food for thought

Proverbs 14:4 says

"Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty,

but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest"

You may think this is dumb, but I sometimes find myself complaining about my house and my family. I only have five people to deal with here(we know many of you who have a LOT more than that), but it's amazing to me how often we have to pick up the same cups, shoes, tools, instruments, etc. When my guys are busy on their work schedule, they obviously don't have a lot of extra time to keep everything "ship-shape", so the house suffers neglect, and my patience level starts to deteriorate. I get grumpy with them about picking up after themselves. I look around at piles of this or that and wonder why we own so much STUFF!

Then this verse comes to mind, only my version reads more like this:

"Where there are no boys and hubby around to make messes for me to clean up after, the house is empty(and I'm not ready for that yet!), and it's because they are busy and actively doing work that the house is a mess. When they aren't busy, they have time to help keep the house clean, but then the bills start piling up instead.

Their strength and energy is what pays the bills!"

It's all about choices. Everybody has their part in this life. No one is an island unto themselves. And what I do affects others, as much as what they do affects me.

So, when I let the little inconveniences be what I focus my attention on, then I miss out on the bigger picture. In this case, while I don't like the messy house, I LOVE my family! THEY are my most precious gift! And they are worth FAR MORE to me than the messes they make along this journey we travel on together. Not to say they couldn't learn to be more pleasing to the only female in our home (that would be "ME" of course!!)

THEREFORE (at least for today), I'm choosing to enjoy my family AND the mess!!

My house is clean enough to be HEALTHY,

and dirty enough to be HAPPY!

I'm sure when all is said and done, and I stand before God one day, He won't care about how many times I cleaned up after my family nor what my house looked like each day, but rather, did I do it with a GOOD ATTITUDE and LOVE?