Chocolate and Costumes

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.  Philippians 4:23

This week we celebrate the holiday that as a mother, was my least favorite.  Halloween called on two gifts I seemed to get in shorter supply than many moms.  Halloween with kids requires creativity and strength in the face of chocolate temptation…I am woefully lacking in both departments.  One year I remember dressing two little Wohlfert boys in black trash bags with cardboard ears duct taped on a headband; they were bats!  Thank goodness their desire for candy was greater than their interest in costumes because they looked pretty ridiculous.   All the thinking, creating, hauling, buckling and unbuckling was frazzling.  I was often amazed at how many times in a short window of time I could say, “Stop eating candy!”  How crazy was that.  I dressed them up, took them out with big bags to get candy and then told them not to eat it.  Such an odd holiday isn’t it!

Even though I was always happy to turn back into our own driveway at the end of the night, I would sigh as I faced the bowl of candy on the dining room table that wasn’t empty.  I love chocolate so the battle with the candy bowl would begin at the very time of day when I was too tired to slay the sugary, chocolate dragon.  After they collected the candy the next step was to dump out their bags and begin to sift and sort and trade.  After I was finally able to scrape my sugar buzzed little darlings off the ceiling and get them to bed I was faced with the bowl of candy and the three bags to boot.  As a responsible parent, I had to hide it so they didn’t gobble it all up by All Souls Day; that was responsible parenting…right!  I could put it out of the kids sight, but I knew where it was.  The virtue of temperance always seemed to wane around the end of October. Looking back, I’m not sure how hard I prayed to resist that temptation and I’m sure I didn’t pause to think about how I could grow in holiness if I had actually called on God’s grace and conquered the temptation.

The years have passed and now I can think of Halloween in a different way, and as I sit here typing in an airport watching adorable little kids trotting through the airport in their Halloween costumes, I see some similarities between the upcoming holiday and my faith walk.  I wake up every morning and spend the first chunk of my day in prayer but in all truthfulness,  I realize that sometimes I don’t invest much more creative energy in my prayer time than I did in the kids costumes.  Sometimes I just sit there and “get the job done” so I can collect a reward from God; much like the kids and their pursuit of chocolate rewards.  The temptation of all that candy doesn’t just come at Halloween and all temptation isn’t chocolate.  I can shake my fist  and throw a hissy fit or I can bear down and push through it.  In  temptation, no matter what form it takes we can fight it and draw closer to the Father or we can forget to ask for help and deliverance and be steamrolled by it. Option two always leaves me feeling fuzzy, guilty and a little nauseous like a trick-or-treater (or parent) who ate too much candy. 

God often asks us to do a lot and I’m not always a big fan of doing what he asks.  I can be  little “do my own thing-ish” at times, so I laughed when I remembered the negotiations that took place around the kitchen table as the kids sorted and traded  their evening haul.  Truth; I do that with God.  Well God, if I serve you here and do what you ask here then you should be able to give me this or help me with that.  Oh, and how about that candy hiding! I became the master of the goods.  I decided when and how to dole the treats out.  They were motivation for good behavior, prompt chore doing and extra vegetable eating.  I could decide to give extra for things I liked or deny giving it at all if I didn't think they had “earned” it.  Heck, on more occasions than I can count, I actually kept some of their stuff for myself. (sorry kids) I can’t even begin to tell you how magnificently grateful I am that God doesn’t hold his grace and blessings hostage the way I held the 3 little Wohlferts candy hostage.  He is beyond fair, he is beyond generous and he delights in giving more than we could ever deserve or earn.  This year as I admire the creative costumes and hand out chocolate, I’ll be praying that maybe I’ll learn from my Halloween thoughts and maybe you will too.

A Seed To Plant:  Take a minute early this week to say a prayer for parents and children.  May they laugh, be safe and enjoy each other this Halloween.​

Blessings on your day!