The Sand Snowman

Sometimes I clip pictures out of Southern Living or Family Fun magazines for inspiration on how to live a full and beautiful life. One such picture was in an advertisement for Florida tourism which showed a family joyfully sculpting a very tall snowman out of sand on the beach. "Great idea!" I thought and filed that mental image away in my family-fun-next-time-we-go-to-Daytona mental file. "We don't get much snow in the sunny south, so we'll make a sand snowman instead someday."

Yesterday, I started that project on the beach with my youngest daughter, who quickly learned that shoveling mounds of sand is much harder work than inserting the carrot nose in the end. So, for a few HOURS, I shoveled sand and made mounds alone while my kids learned to surf and splashed in the pool. The tricky part came at the head, when the weight of the sand caused everything beneath to crumble. I had to start over and over and learned to better pack the sand together to avoid multiple sand avalanches. I learned that you need more water to hold the mixture all together. I learned that you should always apply SPF 50 to that little stripe on your back where your swim shirt may no longer reach your swim shorts when you bend over. My respect grew tremendously for those sculptors of enormous sand sculptures that you see exhibited at state fairs.

My husband begin to tease, calling out (by the pool). "Is that what you've been working on for so long? I can sort of see now where you are going with that."

As I patted and brushed, my mind flashed to Jeremiah 18:3-6 where the clay vessel was arguing with the potter's hand. Where the clay vessel got shaped and reshaped as it seemed right for the potter and was not too happy about it.

Sometimes I think our family life is a lot like making a sand sculpture. I have this beautiful vision of how it is supposed to go, and then the happy vision meets roadblocks and setbacks or simply refuses to cooperate. I find myself wondering what I could do differently to bring about a better result. I find myself praying the whole thing won't crumble and implode right on top of itself before my eyes. I want to be the family in the magazine, with happy smiles, inspiring others to begin their own happy adventures. Instead, some days there is only mountains of shoveling and digging, and structural foundation work to do. I think of decorating with carrot noses and sea shells, when there are buckets of water to still lug in from the shore.

I pray for patience. I pray that when the day comes to sit back and admire our work, I won't be wishing that we had done things differently. I pray that I would yield to the potter's hand and trust the results up to Him, even if His vision is different from my own plans and dreams.