Tomato Staking

Losing Stephanie's mom was hard, but it really reminded all of us how life is so short.  It was a fabulous service celebrating her life.  Her personality shone through as she had planned the whole service before she died right down to the minute.  She had written down who would speak, how long they would speak and what they would speak about!  The reception afterwards included what type of cold cuts she had chosen, even the pickles!  It was great.  Her love for Christ was in everything she did and was all that people spoke about.

Tragically, I heard about a young couple who died just recently, leaving two young children behind. They didn't know Christ, they had no warning.  Their service would have been terrible to attend. Fortunately, there are those who do know Christ that are left behind to possibly even raise the children, but still, so sad.  An awful way to be reminded that we must be ready to meet our Maker.

Of course, there is always something funny that our four-year old brings to the situation, leave it to him to lighten the somber mood.  When we went out the evening of the visitation, we left him under the care of our oldest boys and took our oldest girls.  It is somewhat easier for our girls to handle him and the boys were nervous as lately the four year old hasn't been very well behaved.

Sure enough, he didn't disappoint.  They tried to put him to bed and supposedly he was in bed, but then a big noise was heard from downstairs.  One of them ran upstairs to find him playing in the bathroom with my daughter's make-up.  All I can say is a picture is worth a thousand words.....

They tried to clean it up, but had no idea how to get mascara off and it ended up making him look like Tammy Fay (if you remember her....)....make-up streaming down his face, smeared all around his eyes making it appear like he'd been beat up, punched in the face.  They did as good a job as they could and then put him to bed again.  This time they stayed upstairs to see if he would stay in bed. Apparently he made another couple of attempts to get out, but this time they were on him and as soon as the door was cracked open, they would jump up and put him back in bed.  By the time we came home they had wished they had gone to the visitation.  We found him upstairs, asleep, with huge black circles around his eyes...it was too funny, though my boys weren't laughing as hard....

All these things he does are funny, but there are some things he's been doing lately that have made us wonder why he behaves the way he does.  We've decided to crack down on him and kick it up a notch in all sorts of ways.  I'm monitoring his food quite closely now and trying to avoid as much sugar as possible as I'm sure that plays a pretty key role in his behaviour.  I've also sat him down each morning for the last few days and I've read him a chapter from the Old Testament and one from the New.  We've been talking a lot about what voice he's listening to - the deceiver's voice, i.e., Satan, or God's voice.  I've been telling him how Satan would like nothing more than to ruin his life, just as he did with Adam and Eve.

All seemed well for a whole two days.  By the third day, he came down and he was sensing a new pattern that I was trying to start and as he saw me get up (I never even told him where I was going which was to get my Bible), he quickly said, "I don't want to talk about God."  "Umm.....that's too bad!  That's what we're going to do!"  I said.  "Then I won't listen."  And he put his hands over his ears and tried to shut me out.  I explained to him how important it was and read on knowing the story that very morning was about the serpent tricking Eve.  Satan hates me and my son and he clearly didn't want me reading about his wileyness that morning.    As I read, he started to get engaged, the hands came down and he started asking all sorts of questions.  When we read in Matthew, he found it very interesting the John the Baptist ate bugs for breakfast - cool.  So I didn't take his initial attitude personally, I knew it was Satan's way of trying to derail me.  I'm sticking with it.

One of our new rules is that he can't be out of my sight - ever!  I got that idea from an awesome woman who wrote a book on tomato staking!  She talks about how if we want to raise Godly tomatoes/kids, then we need to stake them.  Not with a stick, but with us.  They need to be near us, almost staked to us, all day long in these early years, in order to learn the right behaviours.  If I let my other children stake him, then he just learns their bad behaviours.

If a tomato doesn't get staked what happens is that as it grows taller and taller and the fruit starts to form, the plant gets weighed down and the fruit falls to the ground eventually rotting.  My little boy has fruit in his life already.  I can see some fantastic character traits in him, but I can also see how the fruit in his life could easily rot if I don't get on him.  I don't want a rotten child or rotten fruit.  I want him to grow strong and tall and to have all the fruit of the Spirit in him that he can.  In a way, God has asked me to be His hands as the gardener and is using me to prune my boy's bad behaviours.  The thing is, God will step in to my son's life when he is older and will seriously prune him in a way he won't like if he doesn't listen to me now.  That kind of pruning is not fun.

When he disappears upstairs, I can't be on him and that's when he gets into the most trouble - out of my sight.  He obviously knows this and loves being where he can't be caught.  All this to say, his life is not his own right now.  I've got some serious training ahead of me.  But, it's my privilege.  I want him to be a child people enjoy being around.  I'm not so sure that is the case right now.  I know of some kids that people don't enjoy.  I don't want it to be one of mine!

I have much more to write.   We've had a neat few days of blessings since that boatload of groceries came.  But alas, the time has run out and I must get going.......more hopefully tomorrow.....