Hieroglyphics

Mak tells Sophia to stop playing with her crackers.

Sophia gently helps Mak pray before they eat.

Brian gets up twenty minutes early every morning to read his Bible and do his men's study.

There are various books littered next to my bed on the Gospel, Idols, the book of John...

Hung on the wall in my hallway are wires adorned with art, layered upon itself, brought home by my preschool student, Sophia.

If you walk through the house without careful step, you might break your heel on a matchbox car, carelessly left behind by my two-year-old.

Hand-made Christmas ornaments made my children, or by Brian, or by myself, hung on our tree.

My laptop, perched on my dining room table. Accessible always.

There used to be baby bottles drying on the counter, or rogue burp cloths lost among the cushions of the couch, or diapers floating around my house, or sippy cups.

They're all hieroglyphics in my life. Where there used to be artifacts of a single life, not lived for God, but for myself alone, there is now very different evidence. I want to know Him. I want to change to be more like Him. I am a mom. I am growing in this role, my life is expanding in this role; my kids test me, challenge me. Today, as my kids were napping, I was thinking - if someone broke into my house, what would they see? What would they be able to say about me, after walking out of my house?

And, I think - this is what will shape our children more than we know. The things that act as hieroglyphics and tell marked stories about our lives, our now, who we are, what matter to us, what we cherish, what we spend our time doing. They will pour over these cave-man drawings in their heads as adults, because our today WILL be reduced to these kinds of rudimentary depictions as they recall their childhoods. Their memories. Some pictures I will be so proud of. Others, I will not. Because, the things my kids will add will be the emotions to the pictures. To my time spent on the computer, they will add disappointment that I didn't play with them more. To my time spent on the phone, they will add frustration that I was tied up and busy with someone else. Or maybe what I was talking about? Sadly, can I say that to my time spent on the phone they will add hearing me talk about others, or complain? Oh, the horror of that. The undoing of that. But, to my time spent in the Word, or in prayer, they will add everlasting fruit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. And these fruits will also shape tomorrow's hieroglyphics into different pictures.

My hieroglyphics as a 21-year-old were sad, confused moments of me chasing fool's gold. Thank goodness hieroglyphics portray a dynamic, not static, environment - that I changed, that God found me, that He softened my heart to see His truth, that He infused it with love, and mercy, and forgiveness.

Our world is one big hieroglyphic drawing, and our children will shade it in with color. What colors will mine be someday? What colors will yours be?