"My Hat Hurts"

 

 

Have you ever noticed how the little people, the ones we think we bigger people can teach things to, are often the ones to teach us stuff?

I thought about this when I met a wonderful little boy named Brayden back in January when I went with Ken to some board meetings in Reading, PA. We stayed with Brayden's family (he has wonderful parents and siblings, too) for a few days, which I mentioned in this post.

Observing Brayden made me ponder my relationship with God, and how He might view me as His daughter who is growing up (trying to, anyway) as she does life.

I found myself asking God if, to Him, I'm like Brayden in these ways:

1. I say "My hat hurts", when really it's my head being scrunched into a tight hat that is uncomfortable. I express hurt from my perspective, while He knows all things...He knows where the hurt really stems from and He's taken great pains to heal that hurt. Nonetheless, He wants me to tell Him how I'm hurting, in my own words, from my perspective. And sometimes, without saying anything, He reaches down motherly hands and gently rearranges the hat.

2. I whine and complain and demand in a loud voice and then He says, "Danette, stop and look Me in the face. Say, 'Please may I have...?'"

3. Someone - a sibling, no less - corrects me scornfully, but I don't want to take it as truth. I keep saying blue blasketball because it's easiest and I don't want anyone telling me what to do or how to change. Especially when they know perfectly well what I mean. Even if an adult says, "If we, along the same lines, call you Blayden instead of Brayden, is that okay?", I say "Sure!" - I'm that set in my own ways and wisdom. (God, do You shake Your head over me sometimes?)

4. When I carefully line up my dinkies on the carpet in two rows side by side with a narrow aisle between and a younger brother who is not feeling very well comes up to my little cars with an excited giggle and triumphant grin and tries to toddle through, stepping one foot into that aisle, I get all fearful and uptight. "He's messin' up my cars!" I shriek. And He holds me and says, "No, he's not. I'm watching him. I'll pick him up if he wrecks your lines. Come, let's sit together and watch him try to walk through the path. Here, let's make the aisle between the cars a little wider for him..."

5. My favorite song is "How Great Thou Art". At first, I want to listen to my favorite recording of that song and sing along with it on Mommy's phone while we're riding in the van, but Daddy has it on his phone and he's not with us right now so Mommy says she can't play it. Then a stranger in the van suggests we sing it all together and I protest at first, but then concede. All ages and genders and acquaintances, family and strangers sing "How Great Thou Art" and it sounds beautiful and it's fun because we're all singing about Someone and to Someone bigger than ourselves. Of course, I don't understand all of this, but I understand some of this. It brings me peace and contentment. And great delight.

So that's what Brayden taught me last month.
What have you learned from the littles in your life lately?

This Post's Quote:

My teacher daughters sometimes come home from school with funny stories or sayings originating in their classrooms. Like this one, as overheard during chat time at lunch: A student related in somewhat dramatic detail a description of a mother cat on their farm that had the nasty habit of eating her own kittens. Another student piped up, "Would that be called 'cattibalism'?"

This Post's Childhood Memory:

I remember a toy coffee perk that my sister and I loved to play with in our make-believe kitchen. The picture of it in my mind is rather indistinct, but I think it had red and clear plastic parts. It was designed in such a way that when you tipped the perk as if to pour its contents and set the pot back down again, some dark liquid inside would bubble up to make you believe you were perking coffee. (not unlike the vanishing milk toy baby bottles from the '60s) When we weren't playing with the coffee perk, we usually kept it in the little wooden cupboard that our daddy built for us, but sometimes we forgot to put it away. It was bad news the times that the perk was sitting on the living room heater and we forgot to put it away - I remember the sinking feeling of coming into the living room and seeing the prized toy with its bottom half partially melted, rendered almost useless from being on the heat too long. (It seems like we went through a couple of coffee perks this way.) I still have a partial set of dishes we used to play with long ago - a few of the red plastic cups and some of the little tin saucers and plates - but sadly, no perking coffee pot!