Everyone Needs...

...an Aaron and a Hur.  

Not sure what I mean?  The whole story is in Exodus 17; but in my condensed version, I'll just say that they were the two men who literally held up the arms of Moses so that the Israelite army, under the leadership of Joshua, could defeat the Amalekites who had come out against them. When the arms of Moses were raised, the Israelites were winning; but when his arms went down, the battle went the other way.  As you can imagine, his arms grew rather tired; and he couldn't hold them up all day.  Aaron and Hur to the rescue!

When I first thought about writing this post two days ago, I remembered that I had written another Aaron and Hur post on my previous blog; and when I searched and found it, I had to smile when I realized that I wrote that post at about the same stage of my pregnancy with Shav that I am currently at with this pregnancy!  :)  I guess the fatigue and discouragement I was feeling earlier this week is completely normal for this stage.

But let me tell you about those who have especially held my arms up this week...

The post I wrote Monday night was not intended to achieve any results other than letting me vent.  However, Tuesday morning I received an email from my kind friend Becky, letting me know that she had read my blog and could she please stay and paint in Tobin's room that afternoon when she dropped her daughter Kathryn off to play with the boys?  My first response was, "Oh my goodness, that is so nice of her!!"  My second response was, quite honestly, "Oh, we don't need her help.  We'll get it done someday."  Boy, I tell you, it's hard to be humble and to accept help sometimes--at least, it is for me.  I'm afraid if I had been Moses out there watching the battle, I would have been like, "That's OK, Aaron and Hur, you don't need to stay here and hold my arms.  Why don't you go do something else for a while?  Maybe pick up a sword or chase an Amalekite or something?  I've got it covered here!"  And then, of course, my arms would have fallen, and the battle would have been lost.  I sure am glad Moses was there that day and not me!  :)

Fortunately, my third response was the wise one:  emailing Becky back to say yes, I'd be so grateful for her help!  And I was...and I am.  

The three or so hours of time she put into that room on Tuesday made a HUGE difference--not just in the way the room looks, but in the way I feel about it.  She didn't need to spend her afternoon serving me in that way, but I'm so thankful--and yes, humbled--that she did.  I want to be like her when I grow up!

When I got out my camera and asked her if I could take some pictures, she laughed and told me she looked terrible.  But you know, to me, I think maybe she's never looked more beautiful.

Just for fun, here's another look at the new wall color and the new seashore border in that room.  Oh, and there's a tiny peek of a cute boy fierce warrior hiding behind his shield, too.  :)

While Becky was serving me by painting upstairs, her lovely daughter Kathryn was serving me by keeping my boys very happily entertained...first, out on the trampoline for a while to soak in the spring-like air, and then with some moon sand that Becky and Kathryn had brought along for the boys.  Moon sand was a new experience for them, and they loved it.  I loved the (mostly) uninterrupted time to work peacefully in my kitchen!  :)

If Becky was Aaron on that day, another dear lady was Hur.  My next-door neighbor Wilma had called the day before to ask if she could bring supper for us on Tuesday, and then have her family stay and eat it with us.  :)  Because they're Old Order Mennonite, they don't drive cars, so sometimes they call on my dad to give them a ride if they're not going in their horse and buggy.  He, being neighborly, is glad to help them out; and they, also being neighborly, wanted to share a meal with us as a way to say thanks.  Because of our wonderfully long kitchen table that can be stretched out enough to seat all of us, it worked better for us to eat together over here, rather than at Wilma's house.  All I had to do was stretch out the table and get it set, and she did the rest: bringing all the food for a delicious dinner.  It was so strange that afternoon to be getting ready for company, but not preparing a single bit of food!  :)  Sitting down to a scrumptious home-cooked meal that I didn't have to make was some kind of wonderful, I tell ya!  :)  And then after supper, "Aunt" Carolyn (Wilma's husband's aunt, to be precise...but we all call her that) started scraping plates and loading the dishwasher, and Wilma and my mom washed by hand what wouldn't fit in the dishwasher, and then Wilma and her oldest daughter Rosalie shortened the table and put our normal tablecloth on it and even got out the broom and dustpan to sweep up the crumbs that had dropped to the floor.  I felt so spoiled.  :)

Having others hold my arms up in these ways reminds me to ask myself whose arms I can lift.  Whom can I encourage as I go about my daily life?  I'm limited by where I live and what my life situation is as a mother of small children, but that doesn't mean I can't be an Aaron or a Hur to someone else.  As long as I keep my eyes open to see the need, and my heart soft to respond to it...

And on that note, let me end with two blog-related items.  First, I'm always excited to change my blog look when a new month dawns; but as eager as I am to see March's look, I'm a little sad to say goodbye to February's.  I loved that header picture of the tulips...mostly because there were seven of them:  one for each member of our family, of course.  I can hardly wait until we can use our real faces for a seven-member family portrait, rather than just flowers that stand for each of us!  ;-)  Secondly, I'm not sure when I've had more fun making a header picture than I did for this March one.  It was way back in January when the idea for this header struck me; and one day after lunch, I got the boys together and told them my plan and asked for their help.  We had SO MUCH FUN taking each of the pictures, and they were troopers as I asked them to bend in certain ways and hold their awkward positions so I could capture them as the letters of my blog name.  When I see the header, I see joy and hear laughter from that day; but I'm not sure that it will be clear to anyone else what's going on in the pictures!  Does it make sense to you?  Can you tell that they're forming the letters S-p-i-l-l-e-d?

Oh, I just thought of one more thing...  When I was searching my old blog for the Aaron and Hur post, I also pulled up another old post that mentioned those names.  In this post I wrote about Josiah, the very last item in it records a funny incident in which he saw a picture of Aaron and Hur holding Moses' arms and he thought it looked like Moses was being arrested!  I hadn't thought about that for a long time, but it made me smile again to read it.  This is precisely why I blog:  to remember these glimpses into the minds of my fast-growing boys...and to treasure them in my heart!