Working Together

"Coming together is a beginning.

Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success."   Henry Ford

Tonight, I came home from work and found my teenage daughter outside by herself trying to dig holes to put the flower bulbs in.  I should preface this by telling you that a couple of weeks ago, we were shopping together at one of the stores and found flower bulbs on sale.  These are the kind that you have to plant right before the frost and they do not grow until spring. 

She is a great salesman, and talked me into buying four boxes of different bulbs.  They were all different kinds, but each needed to be planted.  It has been a busy couple of weeks and I have not had time.  The canning has demanded every minute of spare attention so that I could get it done, and there is still more to do.  She has asked a couple of times, but realized that I was overwhelmingly busy and so has allowed the planting to be pushed to the side for more important endeavors.  Finally, today, she decided that she could wait no longer.

I arrived home after a long day at work to find my sweet daughter out in the front yard with a trowell and the boxes of bulbs.  She had dug five holes and still had nearly 30 more to go.  But, I must admit that she was really working on it.  I decided that she did not need to be out there by herself and sent her to the backyard for a shovel. 
Together we dug a few more holes.  We talked, we laughed, we shared company.  Soon, the other two sisters came riding up on their bikes from a friends house.  They immediately parked the bikes and ran over to help.  Soon, we had all the flowers planted and the holes filled in and the ground watered.  With all of us pitching in, what was a daughting project, became a time of enjoyment and togetherness.

Isn't it amazing how the difficulties in life can be worked through with a little bit of team work. 
One of the major stresses on families today is that the individual, (whether it is a child or a parent) sees himself or herself, rather than the family, as the center of life.  When we are involved with focusing on ourselves, and not on the larger vision of bringing the family together, it can and often does lead to contention.

We have to work together to make our family succeed. But, it’s not something we can do simply by chorees and assignments. It isn't about perfection or lists.  It’s a matter of the heart. We have to have, in our hearts, a desire to make each other happy.
It is that desire which will strengthen us and help us as we journey through our lives. 
Sometimes, we need to put down the business of the world and take time to plant a few flowers. 

A job worth doing is worth doing together.