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The bags were packed, goodbye’s were said, and the children were excited as they prepared to go with their grandparents for a few days to Tennessee. My wife and I do not take a lot of overnight trips where we’ll be apart, but on this occasion she and the kids had an opportunity to spend a few days with her parents while I stayed home to attend a week-long seminar class.
As they pulled out of the drive, I closed the door and turned toward the empty house. As I turned, an item on the couch caught my eye. Approaching, I found an old book of cartoons called The Family Circus by Bil Keane. I’m sure you remember the cartoon from the Sunday comics. My youngest daughter has taken to reading these old cartoon collection books we found at my parents house. As she waited for ”time to go,” she had been sitting on the couch reading this very book. When she left, she had left it open to the last page she had been reading.
I picked the book up, and read the first cartoon on the page. The picture showed the mother down on her hands and knees at the front door cleaning dirty hand prints, kids all around her. A saleslady walks up and says, “My goodness! Look at those DARLING little hand prints!”
A day or so later, I’m missing my wife and kids. I’m looking around the house at small messes the kids left. A sock here, coloring book there, an empty coke can. At that moment, with them a couple hundred miles away, those little “messes” started looking pretty “darling,” like in the cartoon.
Sometimes we don’t realize how much we appreciate our loved ones until they are away from us. Sometimes it takes a little distance to remember that the little things we nag our children about are really not that bad, when faced with the thought of their absence. Indeed children are a gift of the Lord, Psalm 127:3, and hand prints aren’t so bad, after all.
Matt Clifton
BulletinDigest.com