Humor Break - Family Devotions In Our House

You may be surprised to learn that the one person who had the greatest impact on my becoming the mother that I am was my husband. Having been a dad he kind of had this parenting thing down pretty well. He was the one who really taught me how to be a discipling parent. From the beginning of our relationship we would sit around the kitchen table, reading the Bible together as a family.

Sometimes, though, I thought he could have picked better timing for his teaching. One Sunday we came home from church and I had about thirty minutes to get the house ready for a visit from my parents. They were coming for lunch and the house was a mess and I hadn’t started anything for us to eat.

I threw myself into cleaning, all the while glancing at my watch. My parents were never known to be late. If anything they’re usually early. Toys were being flung into closets, clothes on the floor into hampers, and I managed to pass a vacuum over the living room floor in record time. The dust on the furniture would have to wait, but I really needed to get to the breakfast dishes and sweep the kitchen floor, make the beds, wipe down the bathrooms and CONFOUND IT ALL WHERE IS MY HUSBAND AND WHY ISN’T HE HELPING ME?!

Seated around the kitchen table were my husband and sons, reading a verse from the Bible and learning its meaning and application. ‘Now?’, I cried out to the Lord, ‘he has to pick now to teach a biblical truth? We just got home from church, for cryin’ out loud.’ I snapped the sheets into place on one of my son’s beds, crisply pulling the comforter into place, using my hand as a machete to crease the cover under the pillow.

‘I mean, I know it’s important, but there are other times when this can be done, you know? It’s not like we won’t have time later. My parents are only going to be here for a little bit and you’d think my husband would have a better handle on the time,’ I kept muttering, all the time daring the bed not to cooperate.

Between machete chops to the pillow I heard a small but very clear and distinct voice say, “Martha, Martha….”* I stopped what I was doing, bowed my head, and began laughing. “All right,” I said, throwing my hands up, “all right, I get it, I get it.”

And I did, too. It didn’t stop me from occasionally receiving some God-sized smacks up the side of my head whenever I got off track, but mostly I tried to follow my husband’s lead and learned what it meant to put God first in our family.

* See Luke 10:38-42. And for you homemaker purists, I’ve learned how to better keep my home. We won’t ever make the cover of Better Homes & Gardens, but we don’t read their magazine anyway.