Zucchini pancakes and kidsby 김인주

Around this time every year in front of my house, a lady often sells zucchini and eggplants that she grows on her own. It was a Saturday morning and I did not have to go to work, so with a relaxed heart, I bought a few good-looking zucchini and made zucchini pancakes according to the sizes of the zucchini.

While I was talking to my mother as I blew on the hot, deliciously-cooked zucchini pancakes and ate them, the loud noises of my children, who were talking about shops, began to fade.

I thought the kids had just gone to the market for a moment, but they did not come back after even an hour. I thought, "The road is right in front of the gate. Where did they go, even taking their clumsy six-year-old younger brother, when the world is so scary nowadays~??"

As I prayed for them worrying about them, with my slippers on, I went to a couple of places--the sports field and the nearby store--to look for them. However, I could not find them, and in the end, I went to the river where we take a walk along every morning.

"Lord, where did they go? I am sure that nothing bad has happened to them, but they did not come back home after an hour and a half. I should scold them so that they won’t ever do it again next time."

As time passed, I felt that the method the Lord wanted was not for me to scold them. Then, at a distance, I saw my children playing with each other at the corner of the river, without knowing that their faces were being tanned by the sun. For a moment, I reminisced about the time when I grew up playing freely like them in nature, but then, I felt sorry about the present reality since kids can no longer play like that.

But in my heart, the thought that I should scold them in order to correct their behavior and the thought that I should do according to the Lord’s method kept battling. In the end, the Lord won and my children were more deeply sorry about their behavior than they would have been if they had been spanked after having their preciousness acknowledged and accepted and after being taught how they should live.

The kids must have been hungry after playing vigorously. All the zucchini pancakes that had cooled down were eaten deliciously.