A Stubborn 4 year old

Let me preface this story by saying...I LOVE MY JOB! How lucky am I to be able to invest in the lives of these sweet children on a daily basis. I actually miss them during the weekends and think about them randomly and they make me smile. I don't have any kids of my own yet but for now, these kids are my kids.

There is one little guy in particular that the Lord taught me a lesson through a few weeks back. This handsome bugger is sweet and funny...yet can be stubborn as I'll get out. What I didn't know about him was that he doesn't like to take walks...especially if the walk delays playing on the playground. He walked nice for about two blocks and then PLOP!...legs went up and his butt went to the ground. As he was sitting on the ground..bent in an unnatural way...i was using all my tools to get him walking to which he responded "No..play playground." I tried to tell him that playing on the playground would require us to actually get there but no go.

He got up for a short bit (5 steps maybe) and PLOP! again. This time, he was scooting on his bottom down the sidewalk in an effort to get away from me. Since my legs go faster than a scooting four year old, i caught up with him rather quickly. When I did, in the middle of his defiance, he started singing a song that went something like this...."I looooove you , I lovvve youuu, I love love love you Lysha." (It was ELF like..if you saw that movie before). Hahaha..too cute..i almost gave in but I had to stay strong...HE HAD TO WALK..lol. When I could do nothing else, I carried him which was met by him cursing at me under his breath. Eventually, we got to the playground but the consequence of his stubborness was no play playground. Yep, I'm a big meanie..lol.

So how does this relate to Jesus?!? Let me tell you. So often we can be like a stubborn preschooler. We walk nice with Him for awhile but when we don't get what we want or a goal is blocked (through a trial), we plop down instead of trusting that we will get to where we need to be if only we persevere. We might have a resurge of reliance on God but our tolerance for the pushes and pulls of life is not so great and we plop down again. Its then when we scoot on our bottoms, saying we love Jesus with our mouths while not truly believing it in our hearts. All the while not, we are not being the child He made us to be. He didn't make us to scoot but soar.

In our defiance, He doesn't leave us or give up...He scoops us up in His arms and carries us through. We are not aware of this because we think He has left us, so we curse him. Truth is He has guiding us and keeping us from going nowhere.

In His great love, He teaches and disciplines us. He has great amounts of patience for us when we are scooting on our bottoms or cursing Him. He puts up with so much and we can be so stubborn that any human would have thrown in the towel and said.."Peace out!" But not our Lord, His grace abounds. We doesn't lose heaven for our defiance...we get to eternally go to the big playground in the sky.

Thank you Jesus for teaching me so much about yourself and myself through working with these kids!! Sorry for when I am a stubborn 4 year old!! Allow me to learn and change...so i'm not scooting around on the ground. Give me vast amounts of love and patience to give freely to these little ones.