During the last week of summer before school started, my two sons stumbled on a great idea. My older son, Josh, found a step-by-step YouTube tutorial on how to draw Avengers superheroes and Star Wars and Looney Tunes characters in cool, comic-book style. I’d just bought a fresh spiral notepad of drawing paper for my younger son, Caleb, but Josh didn’t have one.

Since I was busy decluttering the house and didn’t want to do a Target run, I offered Josh my more expensive “real” heavy-weight drawing pad that I’d been saving to learn watercolor painting.

“I’m gonna give you Mom’s real drawing paper, Josh — the good stuff,” I smiled, handing it over. “Go have fun with your brother!”

As I returned to my domestic archeological dig through piles of stuff, I heard a sound that sent me speeding back to the dining table where my sons were drawing. It was the sound of paper being ripped out of their notepads again and again. Both brothers didn’t like how their characters were turning out and were tearing paper out to start over!

“Hey, guys, Yoda and Ironman look so good! Why are you ripping them out?” I asked, a bit concerned that perfectly good paper was being discarded so effortlessly. A little encouragement goes a long way, I figured.

“No, mom. It doesn’t look right. See here? The legs?” They knew exactly how they wanted it to look.

I returned to cleaning up reluctantly. This was, after all, just for fun and it was great they found something to do together. Don’t ruin it by worrying about the paper, I coached myself.

But as I heard page after page being torn out, I couldn’t help myself. At the rate they were going, they were going to run out of paper and expensive paper at that!

I returned, trying to walk in nonchalantly and casually commented, “Oh, you’re using Sharpies . . . Why don’t you guys use pencils first? That way you don’t have to keep starting over.” I started getting nervous, watching the boys starting to rip yet another page out that “didn’t start out good.”

I was informed, “You don’t do this kind of drawing in pencil, Mom.”

I inhaled, about to inform them just how much the paper cost and how they shouldn’t just rip paper out because they didn’t like it. I wanted to tell them not to be so picky, and couldn’t they just be more careful not to waste good paper?

And then, my ah-ha moment dawned on me… to be continued on (in)courage where I’m posting today…Read the rest of  “Why It Takes Courage to Rest and Let God Love You Deeper”

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