Ups and downs of life

I think sometimes how hard it was growing up on the plains of North Dakota.  We were poor (but really I didn't know that until I was in high school).  My parents worked hard yet with so much sickness with their children and no insurance they had little money left over for anything.  We were on a farm so they grew most of their food.   As a kid, my sisters and I would spend hours helping my mom weeding the gardens and then in then when the produce was ready helping pick it, shell peas, tip and cut up green beans, washing and  cleaning carrots for canning and cucumbers for pickling.  We would spend hours picking potato bugs off of the plants and then we were all out there picking the potatoes to be put in a huge bin in the basement to last for the winter.  Usually a cow and pig were slaughtered in the fall and that was the meat for the winter and Mom sewed most of our clothes.  I wonder if Mom felt disappointed with her life.  I wonder if she ever felt like she could have done somethings better.  I am sure she did however being so busy all the time she probably didn't have much time to think about that.  I wonder if she ever cried over the decisions us kids made.

But as hard as it was on the farm in North Dakota, I think living in suburbia not having all the physical work to do but to see all that comes up to tempt, entice and make us restless is probably harder to cope with mentally.  I really am not a "stuff" person.  But I find myself comparing myself and my life to others around me.  Comparing my children and grandchildren with friends and family and sometimes I hate to admit feeling jealous of them.  Yet when it comes right down to it, I have 2 GREAT kids who both love God and have 8 grand kids that are so loving and kind and really good. 

I guess if I want to live content, I need to not look at others, but look at God and all that He has blessed me with.