Five Minute Friday: be

B: the letter on the board for my pre-k kiddos this week, the beginning of books and also the beginning of boys.

The biggest boy has begun to read, and leapt from beginner to actual reader, fingertip tracing the lines, whispering out the more complicated words, though we’ve only technically arrived at short e. He’s written a book, too — The Robbers and the Police — heavy on action, light on dialogue, mightily exciting to the boy who sees the events behind the wobbly illustrations.

I feel like a wobbly illustration so much of the time. Trying and trying and trying to represent the excellent wife, patient mother, considerate friend, competent housekeeper for which I aspire, but somehow feeling more like a stick-figure, lacking both in dimensions and digits.

Yet for all my inadequacies, the Lord is gracious. In a lap piled with snuggling sons, in my husband’s smiling eyes, in guests who seem genuinely glad to come, I read how His grace has brought this wobbling illustration to life somehow.

And His grace promises more: “Beloved, we are His children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). If I fail to embody my ideal of a housewife, how much further I fall short in looking like my Savior! But though He never promised to make me keep a perfect house, I have His word that He will make me like Himself!

©Stacy Crouch 2022

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Linking up again with Five Minute Friday on today’s prompt, be.