Awww Honey!

Proverbs 24:13  "My son, eat honey, for it is good"

Proverbs 25:27  "It is not good to eat much honey."

Being a parent is great, except when it isn't.

LOL

We have three, double digits power houses of manliness in our home.  I'm always looking around corners for someone to spring out and scare me.  I've had fireworks wired to the door of the microwave so that when I open it to heat something up-BAM!  All sorts of fake and real critters in my bed, in my shoes and in my laundry.  Big, nasty looking spiders hung by fishing line in the cabinet doors, ready to swoop down and attack me.

Jeans with holes in the knees up the wazoo.

I've slept with Superman and Sonic the Hedgehog and taken innumerable baths protected by army guys, super heroes and lego men providing cover on the rim of the tub.

It is not easy being a mom.

In the Book, honey is used literally and metaphorically for just about anything that is good in small amounts and harmful if consumed in large quantities.

The lesson is that something is good only when used in the right measurements.

Honey is sweet and delicious and healthy, but look out! if you eat too much of it, you can be "filled with it and vomit it." Pr 25:16

My job as a mom is to encourage my children to find things that are good that they like and pursue them.  Enjoy them.

But, I'm also supposed to be there to warn them that too much of a good thing...is bad.

Learning a balance between the two is what most of growing up is all about.

But until my children reach the point of being able to find this balance on their own, that's one of the reasons I'm here for.

Balance.

Do I even have it?

Do you?

We've talked a lot about balance lately.  And consequences for when our lives, or things in our lives, are allowed to get out of balance.  Where one child seems to make incredible leaps into responsibility one moment, and then the very next moment...one side of the scales tip and things are horribly off kilter.

It's like easing out the apron stings...and then reeling them back in when the freedom you've given your child (a good thing in doses they can handle) becomes too much for them and becomes almost a permission to lose control (a very bad thing if allowed to continue).

*Sigh*

I do not have it figured out.  But I know I love my children no matter where their scales are.  Balanced, off kilter, waiting to be blown up or used to dig holes in the front yard to bury treasure in!

I look at my life, and I'm glad my Father loves me in spite of how un-balanced I can be.  Too much time spent reading means dinner isn't ready when my family is hungry.  A little extra time quilting or sewing when the boys are left "borrowing'' each other's clean underwear because somehow, that pile never made it to the washing machine that day.

Balance is: stability produced by even distribution of weight on each side of the vertical axis.

Praying we all can find a measure of balance in our lives today and that we can teach our children its meaning by living it out before them.