Relationships

"Mom, can I keep these in the fridge until summer?" Judas calls from the hallway after slamming the door.

He has produced a sandbox pail of warms. "No Honey, they are going to crawl into our milk and our bread and...well, just kidding, but they might not like being cold, and they'll die before summer comes."

"OK," He answers, and that's the last I hear of the worms until it is discovered that they have spent a number of nights sleeping with him under his bed.

There is a wonderful book I'd like to recommend to all mothers, Worms in my tea. I'll post it as soon as I can find out who wrote it, but I have since passed it on to a few other moms who have busted their sides rolling with laughter. It's about the daily grind of being a mother, very funny!

My sister was just here for almost a week during the time Waylon from Neuhof got his wish to go home to be with the Lord. For those of you who don't know about Waylon, he had a two year struggle with cancer and nobody wanted to trade places with him when the time came to remove one of his legs, but later everyone wanted to be in his shoe when he told everyone "I'm going home." He just lifted up his arms and left. He had said that he doesn't want to have anything more to do with the things in this world. So we were discussing this balance between us living here and having to keep things clean and nice and not letting everything get into a sloppy mess. We were wondering where we cross the line, when do we simply have too much earthly preoccupation? The things Waylon had admonished us about were forgiveness, bitterness, grudges and more relationship based ideas.

So that may just be the line we are not to cross. We should have a look at ourselves and ask if our priority is our earthly work instead of our relationships? Is my house cleaner than my kids conscience? Does raking my lawn come before fixing that little trust issue with my sister? Am I too busy to talk with someone who really needs an ear? Have I got an extra minute to be polite? Is my dress more beautiful than my spirit? Do we come to an agreement if my brother thinks something should be done this way and I think it should be done that way?

Living together in community is not easy at all, maybe we should feel privileged to be on the colony with the people we live with. To be able to touch each other in such a unique way, bringing joy to the children, support to the strong, help to the weak, company to the old, and a light to our youth. Holding these up as our ideal and striving toward it with our ever failing humanity sure helps.

Relationships are also our best indication of how much we love God. He said that whoever says he loves Me, but hates his brother, is a lier. So in effect, we only love God as much as the person we love the least.