It’s amazing how often my kids are teaching me things.

On our recent few days away during school holidays, we took the boys fishing. ‘We’ being my husband organised the gear, bought the worms, found a good spot and I quietly enjoyed watching the going’s on from my fold out chair. There isn’t a lot I don’t do as a mum of all boys, but fishing……well, I have to draw the line somewhere.

Anyway, it was sunny but a chilly wind was blowing. The boys took their casting lessons from their Dad and then it became a waiting game. And waiting….waiting…..This is a pretty big deal for my ‘always moving’ boys.

After using all our worms, and by the time we were feeling cold and hungry, we packed up into the car and started driving home.

Just as I was about to apologise to the boys that it hadn’t turned out as planned and I was sorry they hadn’t caught any fish…a voice piped up from the back seat.

“I love fishing so much. That was the best ever.”

So apparently in their mind, it was never really so much about the end result of catching the fish after all.

In the same week, I came across these beautiful words in a book “Raising Kids with Character that Reallly Lasts” by John & Susan Alexander Yates. I am yet to read the whole thing, but this part made me sit up and listen.

We will never ‘arrive’ in Family Life. 

When I was surrounded by small children, I thought, ‘If I can just hang on until they are older, I can relax.’

It was as if I viewed life as ladder rather than a garden. 

I was always struggling to get to the next rung, the next season in life, 

So focused would I become on simply making it to the next stage that I often missed out on the blessings of the moment.

And at the next age, more challenges were waiting.

There were different character traits to work on and new circumstances in my own life that revealed weaknesses. 

Would I ever ‘get to the top?’

Life is not a ladder to climb, but a garden to enjoy.

The gardeners joy is in his work, a job that is never finished.

He delights in the process of the work.

Our work in families is never finished.

We will never perfect character, nor will our children.

We are people in process. 

Yet there is joy in the process if we relax, knowing that the blessing is in the journey rather than the completion of the job. When we relax, the atmosphere of our homes will become less tense and more joyful and we will rely more on the power of the Master Gardener.

Amen to that x