Not Just "The Tortoise and the Hare"

One part of the Sonlight curriculum that we're using--and loving--in our homeschool this year is The Aesop for Children, illustrated by Milo Winter.  The fable that I, like almost everyone else, was most familiar with was the one about the proud hare racing the steady tortoise; it ends with the moral, "The race is not always to the swift."  Wise words to remember, especially on days when I feel like the tortoise, plodding along, putting one foot in front of the other, lugging a huge and heavy burden on my back.  Mothering is such a long-term project that it demands a tortoise who perseveres and not a hare who drops out halfway through.  But there's more to Aesop than that fable.

As we've read through such a wonderful collection of his fables this year, I've enjoyed them all and been struck by a few.  One I previously wrote about here; but this past week, I read another one that was new to me but stayed in my memory to be pondered.  I'm still not sure exactly how to apply it to my life or why it was so impacting to me, but I'll share it nevertheless.  A little drop of wisdom for the weekend...

The Lark and Her Young Ones

A Lark made her nest in a field of young wheat.  As the days passed, the wheat stalks grew tall and the young birds, too, grew in strength.  Then one day, when the ripe golden grain waved in the breeze, the Farmer and his son came into the field.

"This wheat is now ready for reaping," said the Farmer.  "We must call in our neighbors and friends to help us harvest it."

The young Larks in their nest close by were much frightened, for they knew they would be in great danger if they did not leave the nest before the reapers came.  When the Mother Lark returned with food for them, they told her what they had heard.

"Do not be frightened, children," said the Mother Lark.  "If the Farmer said he would call in his neighbors and friends to help him do his work, this wheat will not be reaped for a while yet."

A few days later, the wheat was so ripe, that when the wind shook the stalks, a hail of wheat grains came rustling down on the young Larks' heads.

"If this wheat is not harvested at once," said the Farmer, "we shall lose half the crop.  We cannot wait any longer for help from our friends.  Tomorrow we must set to work, ourselves."

When the young Larks told their mother what they had heard that day, she said:

"Then we must be off at once.  When a man decides to do his own work and not depend on any one else, then you may be sure there will be no more delay."

There was much fluttering and trying out of wings that afternoon, and at sunrise next day, when the Farmer and his son cut down the grain, they found an empty nest.

Self-help is the best help.

To end, here are a couple of pictures of my boys, who are learning, as they grow up, to balance the need for help from others and life in community with a healthy dose of self-reliance.  They are learning that sometimes, the best course of action is to say, "We must set to work, ourselves."  When my eight-year-old asks at the dinner table, "Mom, could you get me more milk?", sometimes the best thing for me to say is, "Actually, you can get it yourself."  Or when my five-year-old comes into the house to complain that it's too hard to reach the chicken food in the bottom of the feed box, I tell him, "You go back out and do the best you can."  My three-year-old wants help eating his cereal, and I have to say, "There's a lot left in your bowl.  You scoop up as much as you can, and I'll help you get what's left at the end."  Part of me wants to exclaim, "Here, I'll get that for you.  I'll do your work.  I'll help you right now.  I'll sacrifice to serve you because I love you so much."  And certainly, motherhood requires a great deal of sacrifice!  But it also demands times of saying, "No, you do it, not because I don't love you and I don't want to help you, but because I want you to grow up to be a man."

~ my little men in action, having pushed the couches together to form a pirate ship (what else?)...apparently, when I snapped these photos, Tobin must have been on guard duty while Josiah read a book and David was on the computer...at least one of my little men was alert and responsible  ;-)