Being childlike

Dear Addie and John,

I was reminded of a very valuable lesson a few weeks ago at home group during a lesson that was taught and me telling a cute story of the two of you playing that same very day. Oh, how I wish I could go back now and change my initial reaction.

Here was the story:

I was in the kitchen cleaning the dishes and getting dinner ready. Addie, you were upstairs playing in the loft and John, you were in the living room playing with cars. We were all dancing to princess music blaring from my iPhone streaming through Pandora. Pretty cool, huh! Then, I hear this: "John, can you say ... Addie, Addie let down your hair!" Hmmmm, interesting. I assumed that you were playing with your Rapunzel doll upstairs. A few minutes later, I hear "John, climb up my hair!" OK, that was definitely an interesting saying. I peeked around the corner of the kitchen to see what was up. Addie, you had brought the roll of toilet paper out from the bathroom and unrolled quite a bit of it so that a long piece of toilet paper was hanging down from the loft all of the way to the floor of the living room. Apparently the toilet paper was your hair and you were asking John to climb up it just like Mother Gothel would climb up Rapunzel's hair to get up to the tower.

Here was my reaction:

Oh, Addie, don't waste toilet paper sweetheart. Please help mommy roll it back up and put it back in the bathroom. I then proceeded to try to get the pieces of paper now torn up by John off the living room floor and climbed the stairs to help you roll it up.

I squashed your childlike response to having some fun over a $1 roll of toilet paper. How cruel of me! The lesson that I learned later at home group as we were studying passages from Mark 10:13-16, Matthew 18:2-5, 19:13-15 and Luke 18:15-17 was all about "living in the moment." These passages all have to do with being childlike.

2 And He called a child to Himself and set him [a]before them, 3 and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you [b]are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;

13 Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, “[a]Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” 15 After laying His hands on them, He departed from there.

In our discussion that evening, Linda made a comment about living in the moment versus needing to the dishes, or the chores, or whatever it is that is occupying our time. Here, I could have put down the need the wash the dishes and put down the concern of wasting inexpensive toilet paper and play with your imaginative self, even try to climb up the long chain of toilet paper pretending with you that it was your hair and that I could make it to the top of the tower!

Thanks to you and to my wonderful home group for teaching me this lesson that I hope to not forget anytime soon!