For Tomorrow

fake-blocking the bridal shawl.
Percy, the outdoor cat who always sneaks in (little devil), has good taste.

Okay Percy, now you're dead.

Enough with the food pictures already, right?  That is what I was thinking when I emptied my camera card the other day.  Am I perpetually hungry?  Am I obsessed with food?  

No. (well, maybe.)

Rather, I think it is because I just don't manage to leave the kitchen anymore.

I think also may be me trying to assure myself that as hard as I worked that day- there was something to show for it.  The canned stuff gets put behind closed doors.  The food gets eaten up minutes after being made.  The kitchen gets cleaned up for the night and I go in bed wondering- WHERE IS THE PROOF?  Surely there must be something to show for all that I've done!  I've worked ALL DAY.  

Oh yeah- it was consumed.

So these pictures of food are my desperate attempt to capture that proof...the only consolation that indeed, work was done. 

That, and children who seem to be growing inches every evening while they sleep.  

Isn't parenting that way too?  Every day you work and you train and you read stories and you wash faces and you kiss dozens and dozens of kisses and you correct dozens and dozens of times and you do a million things for the sake of your child and then- they go to bed for the evening and you fall into bed exhausted and the house looks just the same and your efforts are tucked in bed with your babies.  Nothing to put on a shelf and stare at.  Nothing to show off to your neighbors, friends or in-laws- "Lookie what I did today!"

But with canning, winter comes and you eventually need food- and so you open up the cupboard and grab a jar full of summer that was tucked away months before.

With parenting, one day you discover that your dependent toddler has grown up into a young person who contributes to the household, talks kindly to strangers, reads good books and learns a million things that you never knew from them and lives in obedience.  And then that young person, years later, will take with them all those precious moments that you gave freely of yourself with nothing but sweet sleep-filled nights to show for them and become grown adults whose lives were changed, shaped and encouraged by the work that you did many years before.

The new cool-ish mantra 'live for today' is just about the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

Because guess what?  What we do today (whether seen or unseen) will affect tomorrow in some way. And it can only go two ways- what you do today can make things better tomorrow or it can make things worse.

I live exactly opposite of that.

As a canner, I don't live for today.  I live life today so that in the future we will be well fed.

As a parent, I don't live for today.  I devote my days to raising, training, educating, loving my children so that one day they will become parents who do the same (but better!) with their own children.

As a grown-up, I don't spend money on silly fads or expensive toys or long vacations, I'd rather save it.  Because someday there will be a need.

As a Christian, I don't live for today.  I live for the future.  I live in this world so that I can live in the next.

I may not see the proof of my work at the end of the day, but eventually I will reap what I sow.  We all will.

We will see the fruits of our labor (or lack thereof).

And I am praying they will be abundant and sweet.