Learning Contentment, Gratitude and Disney on Ice!!!

If you are at my house for any period of time you are bound to hear this question, "Mom, how come so and so has this and I don't?  Why can't we just go out and buy stuff we want?  Why do we always have to wait for our birthdays or Christmas?"  Every time I hear these questions I silently smile.  We must be doing something right if the kids don't have everything they want.  Contentment is such a hard lesson to learn and teaching it can be pretty difficult.  Kids just have such a hard time delaying gratification (hey I know a lot of adults who do too!) and they don't understand that us giving them everything they want is actually a disservice to them and their future selves.

The reality for my kids is that because they are from a bigger family (I don't even consider our family that big) they will have to learn contentment over and over.  In our society this is such a foreign concept.  We want to give our kids everything they want in order to bring them happiness but this happiness isn't real.  It's fleeting.  Society though will tell you that the bigger your family is, the more your kids will suffer because their needs won't be met sufficiently.  My 15 year old nephew innocently asked me when I was pregnant with Makenna "Are you sure you can afford this?"  After I had a good laugh thinking well...it's a little too late for that, I thought how affordability has become a relative term.  It means so many things to so many different people.  I could sit here and tell you that the financial burden of each new child was something that Wes and I thought long and hard about before we got pregnant but that wouldn't be the case.  We pretty much knew from the beginning that we wanted to have a larger family.  We also had 100% faith that God would provide for our family.  I truly believe in my heart of hearts that God loves children and He loves seeing His children step out in faith and say "I'm not sure how we're going to do it, but we will have faith."  And I believe that He rewards that belief.  I would say that we are living proof of how He provides.  God has provided Wes a good job and the years that he has gotten raises have helped sustain us so that we haven't had to worry too much.  So where does that leave our kids?  It leaves them learning everyday that it's not all about them, it's about the family as a whole.  We are not consumers in our family, we are team members.  It's about doing what's best for all and not what's best for one single person.  This is a lesson that I think we will be teaching them until the day they leave our home.

An unexpected thing that I've learned over the years is that when we maintain this attitude that provision is truly out of our hands, we invite God to show His blessings in our lives.  Put another way, His blessings are very obvious.  He shows Himself in ways that we would not be able to.

Last night was one of those examples for our family.  We were gifted, through Wes' work, tickets to Disney on Ice.  We didn't even know they were coming to town!  We were given 4 tickets, a parking pass and the seats ended up being in a suite!!  This was definitely something that we never would have done for the kids!  We decided that this was so huge we were going to make it a surprise.  We only had 4 tickets so we had to leave the two little ones at home (sorry Cam and Mak if you ever read this...you missed out on a fun time!).  We pretended with Owen and Preston that we were driving them to Awana.  Halfway there, they realized they had forgotten their bags and uniforms and started freaking out.  Finally we told them that we weren't going to Awana, we were going somewhere where we would need glow sticks and I handed them some glow sticks.  Preston said "We're going to Disney World!!"  We all laughed and then we told them we were going to Disney on Ice.  They had no idea what that even was but Owen said "Oh Mom and Dad, thank you so much, you are such nice parents!"

The show itself was so fun!  Preston said there was a few too many princesses but they both loved it.  For me it was one of those moments where you sit and say I don't deserve to be here, I did nothing on my own power to get here but none of that matters because I'm here!  Woohoo!  Sound like anything else that we as Christians get to experience?  I hate to compare Disney on Ice to Heaven  because I know Heaven will be sooo much better and that Mickey Mouse probably won't be there....but that's the feeling that I had.  A huge feeling of gratitude.  Today I heard both of the boys say at different times "Hey Owen, hey Preston, do you remember when we went to Disney on Ice?  That was so fun!"  I had to laugh since we just went last night!  Here's some of the pictures we took.  They aren't great but you get the idea.

I want to be very sensitive when I write that I let you know my intention is never to make anyone feel bad or to brag, for me it's more about chronicling our family and where we are at in our feelings and experiences at a certain time!