five minute friday: risk

Sometimes the selfishness bubbles to the surface so hot, I fear it will spew over.  Onto everything and everyone around me. 

You see, I want to go casually lie by the pool and flip through a magazine without a care in the world.  Or start a book and actually finish it in a reasonable amount of time.  {Three months for a less than 300-page book is not a reasonable amount a time. It just isn't.}

Or I want to go the movies and enjoy buttery popcorn and a large Diet Coke with a cherry Twizzler and then go straight home and go straight to bed.  Or I want to come home from a long day of work, put on my comfies, eat a bowl of cereal for supper and veg in front of the TV. 

I want to.




But, I really want to be a mother more. 

So instead, I spend my days denying myself and striving the be the best mommy I can to the most precious thirteen month old baby girl.  THIRTEEN MONTHS.  Gracious, it's happening too fast.

Motherhood.  It is an act of self-denial, if ever there was one. 

Every day, I rise with the sun and consciously deny my selfish desires and pour my whole heart into this life that my husband and I created.  This tiny, precious, perfect, bubbly, growing life of hairbows and frills and fun. 

This week it dawned on me that my journey through motherhood has been the best lesson in fruit I could ever have. 

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness.  Self-Control. 

Yes, fruit.  Good fruit.  Ripe fruit.  Fruit fresh for the picking.

That's what these past thirteen months of motherhood have taught me. 

To deny myself, lean on Jesus, and fertilize the fruit in myself and sow the fruit into my daugther. 


{Sigh of relief.}


This transparency thing is risky business.  But so worth it in the long run.  It is through my transparency that I can feel God molding me into someone better.

'Since this is the kind of life we have chosen,

the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not

just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment

 in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail

of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves

with each other as if one of us were

better and another worse. We have far more interesting

things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.'

Galatians 5: 25-26 (MSG)