May 18, 2017

Pleased on “Planet Mom”

OMAR MIRANDA

“Noooooo! Stop it!”

“I want to do it first!”

It sounded like a herd of elephants in the foyer of our home. As I got up to check and see if that room was indeed still connected to the rest of the house, I was presented with the image of both of my children pushing, shoving, and, like Olympians, straining for the gold, wrestling each other in an effort to . . . practice the piano?

It’s May, and not only is it the glorious end of school for my children, it’s also the month of that dreaded event every piano student must suffer through: “Spring Piano Recital.” As I wrangled the children and threatened to ground them until their own children’s recitals, I noticed my wife sitting silently and serenely with a smirk on her face. After 20 years of marriage I know exactly what that look means: I have a crucial piece of information you don’t have.

I will never be able to compete for the special (and unique) place my wife has in my children’s hearts.

I wisely asked her to please elaborate on why my children were acting as if they were attacking their first present on Christmas day.

She eagerly obliged. With a smile on her face and tears in her eyes proudly informed me that her children were fighting about which one would be the first to play for her the songs they had memorized for the upcoming recital. It’s times like these that I realize that try as I might, I will never be able to compete for the special (and unique) place my wife has in my children’s hearts. My children are hopelessly locked into the gravitational pull of “Planet Mom.”

I returned to my computer with my own smile on my face. As the house quickly reverberated with the heavenly and glorious music of my children—who, by the way, play it better than any other children—I realized that God had just taught me a profound life lesson.

Just as my children were fighting and clawing each other in seeking to please their mother by being first to show her the absolute best of their piano playing, God wants us to daily live out our lives so as to please Him.

God wants us to be so laser-focused that each and every moment of every day our every and only thought is to draw closer to Him, our heavenly Father. The apostle Paul, confronting—like a parent, mind you—the Christians in Corinth about all the foolishness they were into (if you don’t believe me, read both of the letters he wrote) clearly challenged them with this, his own mantra: “So we make it our goal to please Him” (2 Cor. 5:9).

So today—and every day forward—let’s make it our goal: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Just don’t hurt yourself, or anybody else, in the process.

Know Jesus. Love Jesus. Live Jesus.

Omar Miranda is a counselor and writer, who lives with his family in unplain Plainville, Georgia.

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