Grounded in Love

I love my young mama friends.  Those with babies and toddlers, those announcing new pregnancies on their Facebooks every eighteen months.

I love their enthusiasm, their love for their children, their determination to do what is best, no matter how hard it is, for the little ones under their maternal wings.

And how I remember those days.  When I woke up at the crack, made homemade oatmeal, mowed the grass before 7.

Ha!

They were busy, busy ones filled with diapers, training the beasts to come when I said come, force feeding peas, all that bathing.

But then one day I woke up and they weren’t so babyish and it was time to train them.  Here’s how we put away the silverware.  Here’s how we hang up a towel.  Here’s how we sort the clothes.

Then there was one brief moment I thought the hard work was done.  Everyone could hit the toilet.  Everyone brushed their own teeth.  Everyone could dress him or herself.

It was a brief, but beautiful moment:)

Because the next thing I knew, I realized that all that coming to Mommy, all that potty training, all that teaching to work didn’t mean a darn thing unless it was done in love.

As my friend, Kim, would say, if it was grounded in love.

Cuz everything’s worthless unless grounded in love.

Everything.

All the training and coming to Mommy and putting away the knives sharp side away from you.

All the getting up early, the oatmeal making, the lawn mowing.

All the bed making on Saturdays and the keeping them away from honey until the age of one and the natural shampoos and all the fresh veggies and all the vacuumed edges of the room and all the books and all the Bach and all the flossing.

Worthless.

Unless grounded in love.

Clanging cymbals.

Unless grounded in love.

Sounding gongs.

Unless grounded in love.

All that training, all that drill instructoring…did I work so hard on these I missed the whole point?

Possibly.

Probably.

Ground them in love.

I hope it’s not too late.