A Lesson in Basic Needs

 The past two weeks God has been reminding me of my sole purpose for being home, and that is to care for the basic needs of my family - not only in their physical health, but also their (and my) spiritual health as well.

My poor sweetie had a 5 day run of a fever with runny nose and icky cough, to be followed with ear pain and additional runny nose and cough. Come to find out she had a molar coming in on top of a cold. She needed a lot more TLC and attention than usual. This was a great opportunity for me to just concentrate on her immediate needs of wiping her nose and just cuddling her.

Here she is feeling a little better : )

About 5 days into Big Sister's illness, Baby Sister decided it was her turn on a cold. We ended up needing to do some breathing treatments with her, but she sure was a trooper - each treatment was met with helpful hands and a need to chew on the mask. The next picture is of her actually falling asleep. Now, if anyone has had experience with a breathing machine, you know they are not quiet - we are thinking about running this all night so she sleeps soundly in her bed...

During the past two weeks, it would have been easy for me to get upset or irritated about the state of things in our home - to be bothered by the mess that was piling up around me or the projects that were not being completed, the constant lack of sleep with two waking up off and on. Now, not to say that I didn't have moments of self-pity during this time, but overall, God was showing me where my focus needed to be - caring for the basic needs of my little ones. It was in these days of just cuddling and caring for my little ones that I found times of quietness to just be in God's Word and again saturate myself with his truths. I once again found specific times of prayer that I had been lacking consistency on for some time since our newest addition. It can be so easy to get caught up in everything going on around us - the busyness of it all - that we can forget our most basic need of spiritual health. It is so important for me to be spiritually healthy in order for me to teach and train my children to know and love the Lord. When I am spiritually unhealthy, my children are seeing actions that are not Christ-like. Although I did not like seeing my children faltering physically, it provided me great opportunities to focus on the spiritual health of our family. God is good!