SALT Challenge - A Mother's Love

It's time for another SALT challenge! And this week our theme of a Mother's love is brought to us by Julie. She has a lovely write up over on the SALT blog, please check it out when you have a minute. For this challenge, I decided to focus on the joy of Motherhood and created an 8x8 scrapbook page of my two handsome boys, who are the joy of my life. The journaling, which is taken from a most excellent book titled, "The Mother at Home" by John S.C. Abbott, is noted on my layout and it reads, "Are there no thrilling emotions of enjoyment in hearing the hearty laugh of your happy boy; in witnessing the unfoldings of his active mind; in feeling his warm kiss and ardent embrace? (There is) delight in seeing your boy run to meet you, with his face full of smiles and his heart full of love; and in hearing him, in lisping accents, call you Mother." Ah, there's nothing like the writings of faithful men and women from the 18th century - so much depth! Just reading that sentence makes any frustration of any day melt away, renews my strength, and has me delight that God has blessed me with the privilege of being a Mom to these two little boys. Well friends...I just spent an hour writing the rest of my post and when I hit the publish button...it disappeared. Talk about frustrating...Since I don't have time to do a complete rewrite, I'll simply share a snippet of what I had written, starting with a quote from another excellent book, "Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Ted Tripp on the role of parenting. "This shepherding process is a richer interaction than telling your children what to do and think. It involves investing your life in your child in open and honest communication that unfolds the meaning and purpose of life. It is not simply direction, but direction in which there is self-disclosure and sharing. Parenting is shepherding the hearts of your children in the ways of God's wisdom." We have an awesome responsibility as parents! We are given our sweet little ones for such a short time, to love and care for obviously, but to also teach them about the deeper issues of live. While I can't force anyone to be transformed, not even my children for they will ultimately grow up and make their own decisions, it is my job to point them in the right direction. Proverbs 22:6, "train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." My greatest desire is not to see my children grow up to have all that they ever wanted or to necessarily be wildly successful by the world's standards but to see them become courageous, strong Christian men. May God be pleased to answer those prayers... Please stop by the SALT blog to see the beautiful creations posted by our design team! As for my project - All products by Tim Holtz...children by Kevin and Kim. ;-) Enjoy!