Grace’s Confessions: I love Shiny, Flashy Noise-Makers

For those of you new to the blog, occasionally my baby girl, Grace, will ask to guest post. It’s been several months since she last submitted something so I am excited that she is back.

Sorry I have not written in some time, but my life is busy. It’s hard to eat enough to make my legs this chubby, but I do my best.

Although I am getting the food thing down, I still have not learned to crawl. My parents appear concerned, but it doesn’t bother me. If I want to be somewhere I am not, I cry, and then somebody comes and picks me up. Its way better than crawling.

Apparently it bothers them enough that they are trying to trick me into doing it. They call it “teaching,” but I think they are just trying to trick me into doing something I don’t like.

They show me something I want and then they place it on the floor just outside of my reach. It is usually shiny, flashy and makes noise.

I call these objects of my desire shiny, flashy noise-makers. Dad calls it an iPhone.

I reach as hard as I can but it is usually just beyond my grasp. Sometimes I reach so hard I end up pulling one of my legs up and I sort of wiggle closer to the object. I have found that if I do this several times I can then reach the shiny, flashy noise-maker.

When I finally grab it, I get so happy I kick my feet.

Then Mom and Dad make noise and clap their hands and say unintelligible words. The whole routine is very weird.

When Dad tricks me in this way, he tells Mommy a story. He thinks that his “teaching” me to crawl is like God teaching us to become more like him.

When God puts something in our hearts that we want, we will start to work towards getting it, even if we do not understand what it is or why we want it. But often he puts it just a little outside of our reach so that we can struggle to grab it. And when we struggle we find that we can do something we have never done before and we wiggle just a little bit.

Dad says that adult wiggles look different than my butt twitch. He tell mom that we trust God more. We become less afraid. We pray more. We read more. We love him more. And then all of these “wiggles” suddently turn into crawling. Eventually crawling turns into walking.

Dad says that it is more about the journey than the destination. He says that Jesus made the destination certain. Transformation happens on the way there.

I think Dad is trying to say that God does not always give us what we want right away because he is trying to teach us to crawl.

Which is weird, because Mom and Dad can walk and they have a credit card. I have seen them get all kinds of things they want with that card and it looks very easy.

Maybe Dad wants something that he can’t get with a piece of plastic?