What We Love

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O man, what is good;

and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

I have been praying this week for God's mercy in my own life and poured out onto my children. I have been praying that I would love mercy and be merciful toward my children. In the midst of some staggering and offensive behaviors at home, all I am left with is desiring more mercy and grace (and the occasional respite to collect my thoughts). My passionate prayers for mercy this week have been echoed by a few of the children, and I rejoice in hearing God touch their hearts this way, drawing them nearer to Himself. In this way I can see our trials as beautiful sorrows, carrying us and our children to the cross where we find healing, redemption, and hope.

It is a sweet thing to me to see that our children learn to love and seek what we love and seek. It was evident in my prayers for mercy and songs of God's sovereignty and sufficiency this week during our Bible and worship time and later hearing the children sing as they went about their day.

In a practical life way I have seen a humorous trend of our children learning to love what we love. I love to clean and my favorite household chore of all is laundry. I find it therapeutic to sort, wash, dry, fold and put away clothing. Growing up my mom also enjoyed laundry, so this comes pretty naturally to me (or nurturally I guess, since I am adopted). I learned that it was a good thing to enjoy laundry. I recently taught our big girls how to do their laundry and overall they do a great job. Of course, when there are special needs involved, just sorting lights and darks can be a challenge, but laundry is a learning task and a life skill and the executive planning function is exercised big time with all the steps involved.

Recently our four year old carried his laundry basket up two flights of stairs and told me he was ready to learn how to do his own laundry. He is not about to be outdone by his older sisters! That, and he really wanted to wear a particular pair of jeans with a particular hole in the knee that was in his laundry basket. I love laundry and I certainly don't want to stand in the way of learning! I coached this little guy through every step and he eagerly worked hard to get his laundry done.

Overhearing what was going on, our six year old daughter came running and asked eagerly if I could buy her a laundry basket and teach her how to do her own laundry. I went right out to Target that same night for the requested laundry basket. Such requests will not be turned down in our home! She has been enthusiastically doing her own laundry now for a few weeks as well.

As a part of their science lessons we often assign a helper to make the home made laundry detergent when it runs out. We have not experimented with our recipe much, and just use a standard one that we found in an online search but it seems to work well and save a bunch of money. And I have no need to worry if someone spills the detergent, uses twice as much, plays in it as a sensory seeking activity, or accidentally falls into the bucket of detergent when standing on the lid trying to get their laundry out of the washer.

It is really nice to see the children learning a life skill and helping with a household chore, taking responsibility for themselves. More important, and sweeter to my heart, it has impacted me to see my children learning to love what we love and it has driven me to pray for more mercy and grace.