ChildLike

My child amazes me. And not because she is my baby and a mother is always a little biased regarding her own kids... it's not that. I experience her in a way I have never experienced a child before. You see things from the outside, but you experience them with your own. You know everything about them. You know things others will never know... You know things they will never know. You take them through every minute of their tiny life, from the very beginning.

You see and experience and rejoice with every first, including that first pruning of their newly forming human nature. I think that is what amazes me most. You can look into those pretty blue eyes and see the wheels turning. You can watch her decide to take the chance of pleasing herself and suffer the consequences, or to deny herself and avoid said consequences. As a parent dishing out the discipline, you are always routing for them. You want them to choose right, not just because it saves you from having to correct them, but because you just overflow with pride.

Nobody knows a child like a nursing mother. There is no relationship more intimate than that. There is no feeling comparable to the love a mother has for her child. Every inch of them is ingrained in her mind; every crease, every hair, every expression. Every emotion expressed by a child is equally, if not more so, felt by the mother.

Oh my sweet child. She is my purpose, my responsibility, my teacher. She exemplifies true honesty and teachability. This is the innocence that we see in children. They are not without a selfish human nature. They are just completely submitted to a teacher. They lack pride in self beyond the simple joy of being praised for good. They do not question their teachers, though they do feel the tempting pull to please the flesh. They are the perfect students.

True child-likeness. The qualities of a child. Simplicity, Submission, Joy, Honesty, Humility, Teachability... An innocence that we seek. Because as "adults" we become so sure of ourselves, so confident in our own thoughts, abilities, decisions. A child's soft view is so refreshing to our hard, unchangeable minds.

As parents we see things our children cannot. Teachers see and know things their students do not. But adults... we see everything, we know everything, therefore we cannot learn and we cannot change. Children see the truth of the thing...

(For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord  -Is. 55:8)

Thoughts from a wintery Sunday

There is just something so refreshing to the world when it has a nice blanket of white covering it. All of the foul colors of late fall are suddenly wiped away into this beautiful, clean template. Even the rotting haunted houses take on a cheerful look when their dark terraces and molding roofs are transformed with sparkling white. The harsh noises of humanity which tear through tranquility are dampened under winters mighty hand.

It makes living in this town bearable for just a little longer.

When I first came here, I thought for certain I had been taken to a place mother nature had forsaken. The land withers under a dusty sky, and the earth is hardly serviceable for plants to take root. The crop cannot stand up against the winds which rip through unmercifully, turning up the soil and spitting sand. Even the winter had been banished, leaving only cold and muddy slush, hardly quenching the thirst which plagues this place. Cracking under the coming summers heat it seemed like the beauty of creation had been completely sucked out by the leeching drought. There was hardly room for hope of restoration. Just as despair began to settle in, just when it seemed winter might yet again pass us by, it came.

Gorgeous powdery flakes of hope, big and moist. A paling sky turned white as cotton floated down, prevailing over the battling wind to settle and clothe the naked and dying earth.

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God." Ps 42:11