My three-year-old daughter loves to sing. Like, all the time. And it makes this Mama's heart so glad. My husband and I love singing, too, and her voice warbling through the house, with familiar tunes and tunes made-up, just makes life so much happier. Yesterday, she was belting out "Jesus Loves the Little Children." It's a favorite right now. When she got to the colors, she sang, "Red and blue and black and white, purple, green, and black and white ..." I asked her how many purple people she'd ever met. She just giggled and continued singing.
Silly as it is to think of purple, blue, or green people, it's also a reminder that children are so much more like God than we are. She just likes listing colors. She doesn't think about what colors skin might actually be because she doesn't really notice that different people have different skin tones. They're just people. And that's the way it should be.
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My father-in-law's birthday was last month, and while we don't always go elaborate with gifts for birthdays, I love to send a little something to at least show that we're grateful that person was born. I asked the three-year-old what we should do for Grandpa's birthday. Here's what she said:
"He can come see us. We can make cookies and surprise him. We can hide them in the 'frigerator." It never crossed her mind that it might not be an option for Grandpa to drive six hours to come see her for his birthday. To her, this was the obvious best-case scenario. She'd get to see Grandpa and make him cookies to surprise him. What could be better? As adults, we lose some of that faith. Yes, faith. Instead of just assuming that we can have the best thing, we doubt, worry, fret, and give up too easily. I'm not saying we need to believe things are going to happen that have no grounds. But I'm saying, as a very loose quote of Matthew 7:11, if a three-year-old wants to give surprise cookies to her grandpa, won't our Father in Heaven want to give us something even better? Let's all try to reclaim the childlike faith that good things can happen. Because they can. When did we stop believing it? |
This is a place for me to share thoughts and ideas not just related to writing. Thoughts about what's going on in my life, about an idea I got that I thought shareworthy, or just a funny anecdote.
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