St. Euphrosynus and humble pie

I am learning along with our kids about our faith. This September 11 we learned about St. Euphrosynus. First the girls and I baked an apple crumble. We love baking together - its something we all enjoy. Then while it was baking, we read the story from the Children's Garden of the Theotokos curriculum about St. Euphrosynus.

We talked about the hard work of being a cook, and how he was very humble and didn't complain - even when the others often forgot about him and didn't say thank you.

We used our felt board to tell the story. The girls helped me make a beautiful garden for the vision of St. Euphrosynus in paradise.

Then the apple crumble came out of the oven - and the grumbling began. The girls didn't want to each baked apples or cinnamon, and I didn't want them to not eat the fruit of our hard work. We all started fussing and grumbling at each other - not at all like St. Euphrosynos.

At some point I recognized the unfortunate irony of our kitchen time, and I ate my apple crumble in silence while the girls played with the felt board. Perhaps next year we'll just eat apples with caramel dip and they can help wash the dishes? In the meantime, I've got plenty of work to do learning to do my work prayerfully and without grumbling.

I may be good with felt and glue and story telling and baking - those are the easy mother things. I so often feel like a failure at the more important things. It only took two minutes after teaching about a humble saint who worked prayerfully without complaint before I embodied all of the things he didn't do. I'll keep working at it - perhaps they'll learn repentance from me?

The girls played nicely with the felt board, making St. Euphrosynus in church. They mixed up the icons, but then they brought flowers to the church. The table to the left was made to be the altar table, but they put it to the side and told me it was coffee hour! So we're all learning - little by little.