Thursday, July 06, 2006

Weekend Home Makeover

This past extended weekend was declared a “home makeover attack weekend” at our daughter’s town home in Orono. We patched, painted, and mounted a mirror, handrails, towel racks, set up a bed, rearranged rooms, made new TV. cables, and more. A good weekend.

The neighbors were interested in what was going on. One of Katie’s neighbors is Sarah, a nurse practitioner, a Wisconsin dairy farmer’s daughter who happens to be German. Knowing this fact, I feel it is appropriate to mention she dropped by with a 12 pack of Leinenkugel Beer early in the weekend to aid in our weekend tasks. It was appreciated.

She stopped by on “the 4th” to see if anything was possibly accomplished (she is an optimist). Possessing this great sense of humor, I asked her what was the best lesson she learned from her childhood on the farm. When she answered, she did not hesitate to say “I learned how to work hard and do it all with a sense of humor.” You can take the farm girl out of Fond du Lac, but you can’t take Fond du Lac out of the girl! She went on to tell us of growing up on that farm and how no matter how hard they worked, her dad made it challenging yet fun. As parents we all want our children to be good workers. Work is a rewarding part of our life. It was instituted before The Fall (Genesis 2:15). Work is a blessing. A mistaken idea is that work was the curse after The Fall but it wasn’t; the soil was cursed (Genesis 3:17).

As parents, oh how we want our children to be good workers. But what did they hear from us—constant complaining, whining about our work. Forgive us Lord for our petty whining nature. To have work is a blessing; may we not forget it.

The old German dairy farmer had it right. Work hard; enjoy it. That’s a blessing. It must have because his daughter said it’s the greatest lesson she learned. She is a hard working, competent nurse-practitioner with a sly sense of humor and an iridescent attitude. If she was here, I bet she’d say “Thank you Dad.”

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