Over the Fence

I never cease to be amazed at how such small things can excite and keep Matthew entertained. Picture a fence, or railing or any other type of barrier that is intended to separate people or animals from things or vice versa. For whatever reason, Matthew finds these barriers a personal challenge in his life, something to conquer and defeat. 

How Matthew views “walls” in his life has made me reflect this past week about the walls in my own life. How do I view them? Do I stall and take the advice from the world around me and look for the easy way around? Or, better yet, do I look to find someone else to scale the wall for me. As I was reflecting this week a few quotes guided me along: 

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm” Winston Churchill 

occasionally Theresa and I are complemented on how we are dealing with Matthew and our three other children as if we have this child rearing thing figured out. I can assure you that we are not perfect and have many failures to show for it. What I can say is that we strive to not lose the enthusiasm. The only way we do that is to lean on our Heavenly Father for strength. We know that He will supply us with what we need to make it through. I have to admit that the following words made me smile a little…knowing that even though this woman served the poorest of the poor, she showed humility and humor: 

“I know that God will not Give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” Mother Teresa 

Take a close look at the Antelope's Left Ear...

Matthew’s measure of success when facing walls is if he can put a sock over it. Yep, a sock. We keep an abundance of socks in his bag and in the car for when we are away from home. Here are a few places where you can find one sock; Frederick Meijer Garden pond, the Giraffe enclosure at the San Diego Zoo, Lake Superior near Pictured Rocks and Cabela’s in Dundee just to name a few of the ones that we were not able to recover. There are countless more that we have been able to pick up from various landing spots. 

When you are facing your next big challenge, or wall…grab your sock, take aim and give it your best shot.