Thanks for the encouragment.

The Lord gave me some encouragement today from a new book I bought the kids. It is called "Mama, do you love me?" It is a dialog between a little Eskimo girl and her mother where the little girl is testing her mother's affection through various scenarios. One goes like this, "What if I turned into a polar bear and I was the meanest bear you ever saw and I had sharp shiny teeth, and I chased you into your tent and you cried?" The mother replied, "Then I would be very surprised and very scared. But still, inside the bear, you would be you, and I would love you." The picture is of the mother lifting up the bear's claw to see her daughter's sweet face hiding underneath the bear. At first I thought, 'Yikes!' But today I felt like the Lord kept reminding me of that scenario and I thought, Oh, H. and then 'Thank you Lord.' As I said yesterday, H sometimes loses it. Sometimes he is as scary as a polar bear, when I think of what this would look like on a teenager! And then I remember, he's not, he is 3, and the Lord is going to help us raise him up to be able to make better choices. And then I think of my sweet blond-haired blue-eyed boy with crocked teeth and his big sweet smile and he's not really scary at all. He is H. My sweet little H. God will help him. God will help me. And I do really love him. God has given him to me as a gift, and I receive him everyday as one. even if at 7:30 he is screaming as he did today (because of his shorts). We made it through. God will help me through. I just need to remember some days to lift up the paw of the bear and see my sweet boy's face.