She would rather be outside. In the grass, playing with water, grabbing handfuls of dirt, finding the best rock—Patricia loves to explore. Last week we spent an hour sitting in the path between our house and the neighbor’s, putting dry leaves in a bucket and pouring them out again. They crunched between her clumsy fingers and under her chubby feet. They tickled her arms when I emptied the bucket over her head. She struggled to contain a long piece of grass that, no matter which end she started with, would not rest in the bucket like the leaves. Every time I did something new—picking leaves from a new place, throwing them over my head—she did it too.
Later that day we were inside and I lost sight of her for a moment. I found her behind the house.
If she had her way, walking anywhere on the compound would be an all-day activity. The road, full of stones, is her favorite playground. Give her a cup to collect the stones and she can happily sit alone or with friends, picking stones one by one until she has enough, then overturning the cup and beginning again. I don’t remember teaching her that. I don’t even remember when she started.
In the last year, I have watched Patricia make one discovery after another. At first it was herself—I remember Christian and I watching in admiration as she clasped and unclasped her fingers the first few times. What must have been going through that head of hers? Did she realize that the things before her eyes were also under her control? Did she like the feeling of touching her own hands? Was she confused by it?
On Good Friday last year, some children and I had just finished bathing Patricia on the verandah and I lay her face-down on a towel to dry off. Suddenly she flopped to the left and rolled over! Thinking it might have been a fluke or I had set her more on her side than I thought, I put her back on her stomach. She rolled to the right! Once more I set her on her stomach, and once more she surprised us by flipping herself to the left.
“Rhode, go get Uncle Christian from the office and tell him to come quickly!” I said, and Rhode ran behind the house to his office so he could see Patricia’s new trick. They both came running back, I put Patricia on her stomach again, and we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
We had to wait six weeks before she rolled over again. We have a lot of anticipatory videos of her not rolling over. Some things take time.
When Patricia became mobile, oh the discoveries to be made! The Monday after she started crawling, I reorganized some kitchen shelves to make sure all the plastic and non-breakable things were on the bottom shelf. By Friday she could pull herself to standing and reach three shelves up.
One day while I was preparing supper, I put a basin upside-down in the living room for her to use as a drum. She could not walk yet and was just starting to pull herself up to standing. As I was cooking, I heard her scooting the basin around on the floor, talking to herself. Enjoying her babbling voice, I continued cutting vegetables for a few minutes. When I turned around to check on her, she was standing on top of the basin, holding onto the table for support. She looked at me with a proud smile on her face and bounced up and down, her bare butt jiggling. Seriously, I could not have asked for a cuter daughter.
We taught her how to wave and she adapted her own style where she bends at the wrist and looks like a princess in a parade. We taught her how to blow kisses and now she does that every time she says goodbye to someone. When we started spoon feeding her, she wouldn’t open her mouth unless she also had a hand on the spoon. After seeing us clean her highchair tray several times, she now takes the washcloth from me and cleans it herself. I don’t know if I am more impressed by the things she discovers herself or the things she copies from us. She amazes me time and time again and every time I look at her with a new sense of wonder and love.
That is exactly how God looks at us, isn’t it?
We are these small beings that He created. He knows our capabilities and He knows what we have to discover. We are—and to some extent will always be—babies to Him. While I think it is precious to watch Patricia discover her own toes, God is saying, “Look, they finally figured out how to take a picture of a black hole, that’s so cute!” While I wait for Patricia to roll over, God waits for us to cure cancer.
It puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? How small we are and how big He is? Just like Patricia has no idea what she doesn’t know, we also have no idea what still lies before us, beyond our short little grasp and even our imaginations. And God watches and waits with the same smile I have when I watch Patricia make new discoveries. And to think that the love in His heart is infinitely greater than the love that resides in mine… unimaginable.
No comments:
Post a Comment