the day of small fries
by Denise Sproul

If you have been blessed with children, no matter how many and no matter how old, you probably feel like many of your days are taken up with "small things." That's not just referring to the size of your offspring, it's referring to the grandeur (or lack thereof) of most of the tasks you perform. I fully understand, in caring for our six children, that such work is difficult. At present, given Shannon's special needs, we have three that are, in terms of ability, two and younger. When we had four children who were under five years old and we did not yet even know Shannon's diagnosis, RC used to tell me that we were approaching, if not already in, the hardest point in caring for young ones. He would explain that at some point children become net gains in terms of their ability to help. Having nine children, if some of them are ten and older, is far easier than having four children six and younger. RC's biggest beef about having only one son is that he'll only have roughly a six year window of having someone to cut the grass. Our days are filled with meal preparation, clean-up, laundry, meal preparation, diapers, cleaning, meal preparation… and so on. It is easy to fall into bed exhausted each night, wistfully longing for the children to grow older.

This wishful thinking, while understandable, is actually folly. First, as Nancy Wilson once rightly noted, being worn out at the end of the day, if you're doing the work God has given you to do, is a good thing, not a bad one. It is the world and not the Word that suggests we ought to not be tired. And we believe the world instead of the Word because we are by nature lazy. We think there's something wrong with the picture because life isn't supposed to be hard. Does Scripture say that?

Wishing the children would hurry up and grow up is also folly because it is failing to delight in the variety of blessings that God can send. All children at all ages are a blessing, but they are different kinds of blessings at different ages. For instance, while they may get more productive as they get older, they will almost certainly get less cuddly. And they're not likely to excitedly bring you a paper with scribbles all over it and say, "I made it for you, Mommy!" Third, this wishful thinking disdains God's calling in your life for now. No one particularly enjoys changing diapers, but neither do little children like wearing dirty diapers. We need to do this. We need to do it joyfully, recognizing that done in the right spirit, it is our service to Christ (well, it's our service to Him regardless). These mundane chores are precisely what we need at this season in life to sanctify us; otherwise God would not have given them to us. It is this garden we should be concerned with. If we are centered on our own sanctification, if we are consumed with tending our own gardens, we will trust our heavenly Father that whatever He calls us to is of necessity weed-pulling work. This is true even if it means we can't spend as much time in our literal gardens.

Even though Shannon's difficulties have often seemed unendurable (though mentally I understood that God would never put us in circumstances beyond that which we could bear) God has used her dependence to magnify for me the importance of carefully caring for all of our children. They all need us, special needs or not, and we should not despise the days of small things. With Shannon we see no end in sight to diapers; we see no time when she will become a net gain in terms of her ability to help. She has no chores other than, at almost six years old, putting her bottle in the refrigerator after we open it for her. She is dependent on us seemingly for everything, yet how much more we are dependent on the Lord. And how gracious He has been to use her sweet life to show us that. What joy she has given us—a boatload of physically hard work and financial expenses but a daily reminder of God's care for all of our physical and spiritual needs, a daily reminder of our own inabilities in light of God's great power and grace.

Of course we must rejoice when our children do grow older, for that too is what God has sent us. We will miss them when they are gone from our homes, but should not wish it were otherwise lest we less than joyfully embrace the circumstances God sends us at that time. For now, while we need to beware the view that sees little children as a burden or a weight to be shaken off at the earliest opportunity, we must also eschew the view that sees them merely as romantic toys. They are not objects to be dressed up cutely and paraded around for the fun of observing their antics. They are little souls that are to be nurtured and trained for God's glory and that involves lots of things that would not look at all romantic to the world (or to the worldliness in us).

In short, we must despise nothing that God sends our way, even that difficult hour between when our children leave the home and when they start giving us grandchildren. And if that delightful time seems too long in coming, find another young mother to "adopt" and help her in her days of small things. We have several ladies in our church and larger community that have blessed me and others immeasurably in this way. It also helps to remember that this is not truly a day of small things, but a day of grand things for we are tending our little sprouts, who will live forever.

Denise is mother of my six small fries.