For My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts…”

The time: a hazy morning in mid-August.

The place: the very cluttered home of a homeschooling family with 5 children ages 4 to 12.

The scene: the entire downstairs looks like the aftermath of an explosion in a combined toy store/book store (specializing in broken toys and books with bent covers). Dirty breakfast dishes and leftover food are liberally strewn about the kitchen table, counters, and sink. Baskets of laundry await washing, hanging, and folding. A recent calamity involving the filter of the fish tank and a rapidly moving child has resulted in lots of water being evacuated from the fish tank to the surrounding area.

I am in a mild state of panic because the neat little calendar I made up says today is the first day of review prior to the start of the new homeschooling year in a couple of weeks. I feel totally unprepared to teach a 7th grader, two 4th graders, and a first grader while preventing a 4 year old from bathing her dollies so enthusiastically that she overflows the bathroom sink into the basement below.

I am in a moderate state of panic about teaching Latin to my 4th and 7th graders, as I know no Latin. Ok, I actually know the first verse of “Adeste Fideles”. Well, come to think of it, I also pretty much know two verses of “Tantum Ergo” and “O Salutaris” from Eucharistic Adoration. AND we’ve been singing the Agnus Dei at Mass for a few years now. So maybe I don’t need to panic about teaching Latin after all! Hey, whoever said writing was therapeutic must be right; I feel better already!

Anyway — it is still not a pretty scene in the house, and there is still massive lesson planning that must be done by me, in addition to that review we’re supposed to tackle today. I begin to marshal the kids to their respective clean-up tasks, so that I can listen to constant whining about how hard I make them work as I actually do the cleaning up.

Interject into this scene the pleading voice of a nine year old child who has fallen in love with an idea and is on a quest to see it to fruition:

“Mom, can I get the oil paint out of your old art kit in the attic so I can paint some dinosaur pictures?” I look around the room, wondering where he feels he might be able to find a flat surface upon which to work, and once again, as so often happens in the vocation of motherhood, I lift my eyes from the mundane to reflect on eternal spiritual truths.

Children and parents do not see things the same way. To me, it seems utterly ridiculous to think of taking up oil painting when one is surrounded by such a mess that it’s hard to walk across the room safely. Not for the first time and probably not for the last, I think “Sheesh, that’s probably how we all look to God — totally pre-occupied with the wrong stuff.”

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

I think, “That pretty much sums up the difference between me and the kids: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways!”

I have to admit it’s crossed my mind that my relationship with my children echoes the relationship of the human person with God. Obviously, I am a pretty poor stand-in for God, but my point is that I sometimes feel I “get” how God must feel about us! I really think He must look at us sometimes and see us surrounded by dirty dishes and laundry, tripping over our toys — and begging Him to let us get out the oil paints!

Does God allow us to be parents to better understand His Parenthood? Does He send us these adorable little bundles who can exhaust and frustrate us beyond belief — yet for whom we would willingly lay down our lives — so that we can get some tiny, little inkling of the way He loves us?

“Hmmm,” I wonder, “where are the spiritual dirty dishes and strewn toys that I don’t want to clean up in my own life today because oil painting looks like a lot more fun?” Maybe I’ll give that a little thought as I start these dishes…

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