God Did It Again!
Today Shalom and I canned green beans and potatoes. I can’t express to you how fun it was. Last year it was work, just a matter of doing a job that needed doing.
This Spring I told Mike to plant a small garden because my basement was full of canned goods, and I did not want to have a big garden to keep up. Habits die hard, and he was sure someone would need the extra, so he planted the usual size. How right he was.
When the cold days of winter come around, Shalom will open these jars and serve her husband. It will be their hands that are united in prayer, thanking God for his abundance and provision. This summer Shalom is busy preparing for her future home. The tomatoes will go into jars tomorrow, and the corn will be taken off the cob next week. It is not work this year. As Shalom, Shoshanna, and I prepared the vegetables we laughed and played like little girls playing house, and I guess we were.
Shalom has been preparing for this special moment all her life. More than any of our other children she anxiously watched us when we were tired, sick, hurried, and busy with life. She has carefully observed the interaction between her father and me. I saw her taking pleasure in the many times I raced to the door and threw my arms around her daddy. Every time she saw our eyes meet in love and appreciation, she considered it. She spent her youth matching her steps with mine until she had her bearings and began to walk on her own.
I have always said that Shalom was the hardest of all of my children to raise. She was the meekest, most impressionable, gentlest, kindest, hardest working, and most compliant of all our children. She was everyone's dream child. She wanted to please. She believed all things, hoped all things, and loved in all things. If I had ever expressed rejection towards her, just one time in her whole life, if I had screamed out at her that she was a nobody, she would have believed it was true. It would have left permanent scars on her soul. The other children were tougher; they would fight back if someone tried to put them down, but when Shalom was young, she accepted everyone without evaluation, and needed everyone in her circle to accept her.
The problem lay with the word “everyone.” I knew the wrong friend would influence her to evil. Even adults would have manipulated her in directions I did not choose. Without careful supervision, selfish adults would have used her willingness to give and serve to the point of breaking her spirit. I knew her desire to never judge anyone for anything could cause her to become weak instead of sweet, wayward instead of compliant, and broken instead of gentle. More than the other children, I had to make judgements for her until God could work into her a godly judgment. I knew that, of all my children, I would need to be her strength, her conscience, to say "no" to all those who would take away from the beautiful person she was to become.
