In the Dailies

Yesterday I wrote about how I want my kids to choose me as their best friends. For a while, I’ve got that. They LOVE me! They want to be just like me. For now anyway. I love that in spite of all my many, many mistakes — maybe because of my mistakes — they still love me. They still want to imitate me.

Now, some days the imitations are really annoying. I hate seeing myself in them — like when they repeat me saying I hate something. Ellie has recently declared “hate” as her favorite word. Once again God uses my kids to remind me of my shortcomings. I don’t like seeing my failures or the areas where I need to grow. That part’s not fun. But I do love seeing me through their eyes. I love seeing how wonderful and fun they think I am. I love that they think me worthy of imitation. I know I’m not always, but it’s nice to know that once in a while I do something right.

Lately the most frequent imitation (other than using the word “hate” far too often) is playing guitar. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that Rick bought me a guitar for my birthday this year. I LOVE it! I’ve wanted to learn to play forever, but could never justify the cost for something I didn’t think I’d ever have the time to work on anyway. It was a wonderful suprise, a perfect gift. Anyway, I am finding time to learn and am having SO much fun with it. Practice time is tough, though, because it almost always gets hijacked. Like this.

I love it. To use one of my Mama’s expressions, it tickles me to my core. Yes, the control freak part of me tenses at the possibility of a three-year-old dropping my precious guitar, but the real part of me remember that that three-year-old is way more precious than a hollowed out chunk of wood and strings.

Your turn! What can you find joy in this week? How can you focus on the lovely, the true, the pure, the good of life?