If Jack Wrote My Blog...

“Jack, what should I write about?”

“Colorado.”

“What about Colorado?”

“Go to Colorado and play playground.”

Jack is two, and there are two reasons Colorado is “randomly” on his mind this evening. 1) His MiMi is there this week. 2) Today his daddy showed him a bunch of pictures from our trip there last summer.

Minutes later when I ask Jack what he’s thinking about, he tells me, “School.” “What did you do at school?” I ask. “No push Malachi at school.”

Good. We’ve been working on that.

I’m a worrier. I worry about being worried. I worry about making others worried. Jack doesn’t. He thinks about the stuff and the people he loves. I guess you could argue that he’s too naïve to know there are things to worry about, but that’s a naivety we should all consider reverting to.

Do I really believe that “we are more than conquerors” and that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:37–39)? (What a powerful list—maybe we should read it again.)

Right now, Jack believes nothing will separate him from my love. When he gets in trouble, I do my best to reinforce this faith. I am an imperfect parent, but my children don’t know that (yet). I worship the Perfect Parent, and I seem to forget that (often).

So the next time we start to worry, maybe we should take a lesson from Jack. Life is full of more important things to think about, such as being nice to our friends and enjoying the proverbial “playgrounds” of blessings from a Father who wants us to “worry not” (Matthew 6:25, 28, 31, 34, etc) but to  “look at the birds of the air” and remember that the same Creator who takes care of them takes care of us as well—and likes us better than birds to boot (Matthew 6:26).

 Jack trusting his daddy to carry him safely through the mountains during last summer's Colorado hike.