Some Lessons Learned From My Little One (Part 3)

 

It has been almost a week since my Father’s Day and feels like a good time to share one of the more humorously frustrating lessons I’ve gotten from my little guy.

My latest lesson from what has become a semi-regular ritual of late.  Our little toddler has decided that he knows more than we do.  As most kids his age do right about now, he’s experiencing an explosion of words and loves testing out new words he hears us using.  What I question the normalcy of is how he can be adamant at times that when he looks at his Matchbox Austin Mini-Cooper, he declares it is a van, regardless of my corrections that it is a car.  Never mind I taught him both words and presumably how to apply them.  We have minute or longer back-and-forth disagreements about the proper taxonomy of the little lime green vehicle.

He did the same thing to his mom with colors in the past.  For some reason, he decided that every shade of red was really pink. Even primary color, if it were used to make a dress no one would mistake it for something else, red. Again, our little learner determined he was the master and argued with his mom.  Thankfully this is starting to get better as we’ve been showing him better examples of distinctly pink things and distinctly red things, but it really underscores that he, at any given time, decides he knows more than the ones teaching him.

You can guess where this is going.  It’s really the underlying theme of all the previous lessons I suppose.  It’s the idea that we know more than God.

I know what is best for me. But I don’t.

I know what I want and need most.  But I don’t.

I know everything about this world I live in, what I’m facing and how to handle it, and everything in between. But I don’t.

It’s something I’m sure God will be working on in me till I leave the world to be with Him.  I wish it weren’t so, but I’m thankful that God is gracious and loving enough to take the time to teach me and work with me so that I turn out to be the person He would have me to be.  That He loves me as a Father a child, and that in all the little lessons I’m having with my son, He’s showing me more and more clearly Himself.

 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.“

-Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV