My little girl is nearing the…gasp…two year mark, and we’re seeing signs of the times, so to speak. She can have quite the little temper (which she unfortunately gets from me), and she can cry at the drop of a dime (which she gets from her mother). I stand no chance. One minute, she’s stomping her feet and saying “No ma’am!” Then the next, she’s looking up at me with huge crocodile tears in her eyes and a puffed out bottom lip. No one warned me about the power a two year old girl can wield over a grown man. Thanks fellas!
However, 99% of the time, by baby girl is as perfect as can be. She’s found her voice and loves to imitate anything you say. Which can be interesting. It makes you pay attention, that’s for sure! If Amanda slips up and calls me Matt, well, that’s what I’ll be for the next few minutes. Thankfully, she forgets and slips back into “Daddy” real quick.
She’s an absolute ham, too. She loves to tickle and be tickled, and she loves “hidin” from Dad, which is really just covering her eyes with her hands or the couch pillows, then shouting “Peep-Eye!” when she uncovers them. She likes doing laps in our little bungalow, first circling the kitchen table, then through the “great hall” into the living room and back. She must have done 50 of those yesterday when I got home from work.
She loves reading books and will be found digging through her box o’ books in the living room throughout the day. She’ll then take them to the couch and come and grab either Amanda or myself and say “Sit, dad! Read it!” It’s really cute. I just realized that looks bad in print, but if you could hear her little southern accent, you’d be with me.
But in all the things she does that touch my heart, this one takes the cake. Thursday, Caroline and her mom were out grocery shopping while I was at work. As they sat in the parking lot prior to going into Harris Teeter, Baby C tells her mom the following: “Pray…Dad…Boo-boo…Better.”And that’s what they did, right there in the car. They prayed for my bum collarbone. Because my little girl thought about it. On her own.
Words fail to express how that touched me when I found out about it. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks since I went back to work. My shoulder kills me most of the time. And my little girl thought about her dad, out of the blue, and wanted to pray for him.
I know she’s just a child, but man! If I had that kind of faith! She thought about someone, and she prayed for them. Jesus said that unless we become like little children, we shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Mark 10:15). I know my little girl has a long way to go, and yet she gets it better than me most days.
This all made me think about how thankful I am for Amanda and the job she’s doing staying at home to take care of our little one. It’s not enough for us to take Caroline to church and hope she “gets it” through osmosis. We have to reinforce it at home. And Amanda does an awesome job of that while I’m at work. They pray when Caroline disobeys, and they pray for daddy, and for our family, and whatever else comes up.
And I do my best to do the same when I’m at home with her. I’m trying to show her the Truth that I believe in how I live, in how we live. I want her to see the love of her Heavenly Father in her earthly one, no matter how imperfect it is shown. I want her to hear about Jesus and how He died to give us life with Him. I want her to be filled with the Spirit and be able to call Jesus “Lord.”
And I hope that one day, she can look back and say, in the words of the late, great Rich Mullins, that her parents “worked to give faith hands and feet, and somehow gave it wings.”
The Wading Pool 