I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my name printed among those that are written in the Bible.  If I had been living way back then, I know for sure I wouldn’t want to be named Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, or Basemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite.

The Bible has a very short section about these two women.  Isaac’s son Esau was forty years old when he married both of the aforementioned women.  Until Jesus comes again, those two women will always be known as the two women who

“…turned out to be thorns in the sides of Isaac and Rebekah.”

Whew!  I hope history will not use the word “thorn” when summing up my life on this earth!

Am I a thorn in anyone’s side?  I certainly hope not!  There are days when I feel pretty prickly, though.  Today was one of them., but hopefully I did not come across as thorny to others.  Mostly, I was being pricked by an inner voice that kept despairing at all the things that did not go the way I had planned them.  For our co-op today, I realized at the last minute that the paint pens I purchased for the art project were not non-toxic.  Thankfully, nobody ate a paint pen!  But the smell was horrific, and I had to move the art area to a more open place where we could prop open an outside door.  Conflict arose on the playground because I have not yet established clear rules.  We’ve been such a small group up to this point that the moms just asked me verbally whenever a question arose about the play boundaries.  Well, lesson learned.  A bigger community needs more definite structure.  Oh, and did I mention the pastor of the church spoke to me about children running and slamming into the water fountain?

Oh, but there were beautiful moments, like the one where the four year old girl stood on South America (for pretend) and successfully said the name of the highest mountain: Aconcagua.  Another shining part of the day happened  when one of our dyslexic children volunteered to say the timeline by himself — a first!  Then the older children rattled off the squares (up to the 15s) and the cubes (up to the 15s) like they’ve been doing it all their lives.  My daughter’s oral presentation on Augustus Caesar showed me that she really HAS been learning a great deal about him.  The art projects, although stinky with paint pens, turned out beautifully.  The children learned how fossils are formed by making their own using shells, modeling clay, and plaster of paris. (Nobody ate the plaster of paris, either!)

Lest I be aligned with Judith or Beeri, I choose this evening to focus on those blossoming moments rather than on my failures.  I won’t let them choke out my joy.