Lady In The Grocery Store (finishes admiring Littleman in his backpack carrier, then turns to Miss Boo): And how are you today? What are you doing today?
Miss Boo: I am working very hard so that when I grow up I can be an astronaut and go to Mars.
Lady (slightly dazed, turns to Buddy): And do you have a toy motorcycle? You do!
Miss Boo does have a burning desire to be an astronaut right now. I think because on the Backyardigans astronauts get to go to interstellar diners and have "two eggs, moony side up, and a bowl of floatmeal". But she wants to go to Mars and has memorized where it is in our Golden Book of Space.
And yes. Those are snowboots she's wearing. And yes. It WAS 104F yesterday. She does not see why that should be an incompatible pair.
Potty training is easier if you just don't put pants on. Really.
He gets real mad when things don't move out of the way for him, but he's slowly sort of grasping the concept of going *around*.
He doesn't approve, mind you. But he grudgingly does it.
What? It's Muzzy. It's educational. Teaches them German. And so on. And on days when they don't have a nap, it's either educate them or strait-jacket them to the bed.
Keeping on is harder than it seems. There's a point in every endeavor, quite often near the end or the fruition, where the most sensible thing seems to be to give up. For me it comes during the home stretch of writing a story or a book. For days--weeks or months sometimes--it seems like the best thing to do would be to scrap the whole project. However, having been there before, I know that it is an illusion of sorts. If I can just push through it, very often the story or book turns out just fine.
I notice it with other things. Cooking. Learning something new. Exercising. Relationships. There comes a time when you don't need to change anything you're doing, you just need to keep doing it.
And that, I think, is what the virtue of perseverance is all about, and that's why it's a virtue--i.e., something we can't do without divine enabling.
Praying today for all of you to have perseverance in doing the will of God, and the wit to realize when what you are doing isn't His will. (That's my hangup.) Often it takes me two or three days to realize that something that I just can't get done is...not actually something God wants me to do. (For instance: wear only dresses and skirts. I tried it as an experiment for a week, and only got through a few days, because it's hot here and shorts don't stick to you quite so badly.)
Keep at it. I encourage you, if you are in a down season, to go back to the Scriptures and/or the books that always encourage you. The Imitation of Christ always helps me, as does The Screwtape Letters. And there's nothing wrong with reading simple, happy escape fiction either--try Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.
Cheers,
Breanna
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