Shoe Boxes

My son is a mess: one minute you want to send him to his room for the rest of his life and the next you could kiss his face a million times and it still would not be enough.

He is a sensitive little guy, sensitive in many ways. Sensitive when he doesn’t do well on a Spelling test, sensitive when a friend needs a new box of crayons, and sensitive when his mother cries. OK, I cry a lot. I guess this little boy apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I have tried to explain why I cry. I tell him. “I love Jesus so much and He is so good to me, the love comes out of eyes.” I am still not sure he gets it.

He has been pestering me about Operation Christmas Child. If he has me once, he has asked me 2o times, “When are we going to get our shoe box?” So, finally I got the shoe boxes and now the question is “When are we going to fill our shoe boxes?” The questions never stop with my little man.

He got tired of waiting on me. He went and found a shoe box in our house. (The Operation ChristmasChild boxes had not been put together yet.) I heard him talking. I heard running around the house rambling through drawers. I asked, (in not so nice a tone) “What are you doing?” His replied, “I am getting things I don’t use anymore.” I did not put 2 and 2 together until I saw the box on kitchen table stuffed with paper towels. Paper towels I had already told him to stop wasting.

Well, 2 and 2 made momma cry. My little guy was tired of waiting alright. He had taken the shoe box he found and filled it with treasures, treasures he “did not use anymore.” I lifted the paper towels and this is what I saw: