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“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4

Our daughter went to the dentist today, if you were wondering about the verse above. She was scared. I was scared about her being scared. Unlike her last couple of time going to the dentist, I was the parent on dental duty this afternoon.

The rod and staff comforting our daughter? Her trusty teddy bear Amandine.

Our daughter received the bear as a gift from a neighbor in Pendleton, and it’s been her nighttime companion, school compatriot, and now dental co-conspirator.

All told, the visit took twenty minutes.

While our daughter squirmed and squeezed Amandine pretty tightly, she remained in a good mood and endured the teeth cleaning and fluoride application that made up today’s visit.

Dentists are a blessing from God.

Good visits to the dentist are an even bigger blessing from God.

Teddy bears? I wouldn’t call them the biggest blessing, but they certainly supply — and remind us of God’s — comfort.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Romans 7:15

When my daughter is misbehaving— like she had today — she’ll often say, “I can’t help it!”

From a five-year-old, that’s difficult to argue with. You can imagine the exchange.

“Yes, you can!”

“No, I can’t!”

We can certainly make individual interventions. Today, she was upset about how her coloring was going. When we told her to calm down, she told us she couldn’t. My wife wisely pointed out that our daughter managed to keep her emotions in check when coloring at school. We had never heard her teachers say that she couldn’t calm down when coloring. That kept her quiet for a while.

The thing that struck me as I reflected on this dilemma today is that my daughter has a theological point in saying she can’t help it, although it’s one that she probably doesn’t realize.

What she’s testifying to is that she needs God’s help if she’s going to control her emotions. It’s not something she’s going to be able to do on her own…and least not for the right reason. She may be able to keep quiet if she thinks it will cost her cartoons that afternoon or dessert that evening, but she won’t know how and why losing her mind over a colored picture of a dog is unwise.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul talks about the feeling of wanting to do the right thing and not being able to do it. He says it’s hard to understand what he’s doing.

I feel that way sometimes with my parenting. Even as I thought about our daughter’s claim that she couldn’t help acting up, I wondered what my excuse was when I was impatient with or dismissive of her.

At least I know that I can’t do it myself. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to be the kind of parent I need to be. If saying “I can’t help it” is a way of acknowledging my need for God’s help, then it’s worth admitting.

“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war.” Revelation 19:1

Every morning on the way to school, our daughter and I listen to this song by the CCM band Earthsuit.

It’s a weird song, but its imagery comes from Revelation.

This week, I’ve gotten our daughter into another Earthsuit song called “One Time.” Its lyrics are less overtly biblical, though it does feature the request, “Father, come and fill us!”

Jesus Music can be and should be good. I’m glad my daughter digs it.

“When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, ‘Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.’” Matthew 8:10

Today, our daughter came home from school with a book she made. Its subject was the Roman Centurion (who she kept calling the “ancient Romer”) who asked Jesus to heal his servant.

Our daughter was immensely proud of the book.

“Do you like it?” she asked on the way home.

“Do you think momma will like it?” she continued.

When she was reminded that we were going to her grandparents for dinner, she made up her mind to bring the book.

“Do you think Granny and Grandpa will like it?” she asked.

The book consisted of five pages with pictures and short captions. Our daughter had colored the servant, the Centurion, and Jesus on each page.

“Does it look realistic?” she asked.

Frankly, I was more interested in learning what she knew about the story.

“The ancient Romer asked Jesus to heal his servant. He had faith,” she responded.

“What’s faith?” I asked.

“Faith is when you believe in Jesus even though you can’t see Him,” she said.

That wasn’t a bad definition.

“What about the Centurion?” I asked. “He could see Jesus. What was his faith?”

This one stumped her.

“The Centurion believed Jesus could heal the servant without going to the servant,” I tried to explain. “Jesus healed a man he couldn’t see…and this because the Centurion believed Jesus had that power!”

She was silent.

“Do you have faith in Jesus?” I asked.

“Sometimes at night,” she answered, “when I can’t go to sleep, I pray to Jesus. I have faith in Him, and He helps me go to sleep.”

What do you say to that?

I myself had experienced a fitful night of sleep and had asked God in the middle of the night for help in getting some rest.

All I could get out was, “That’s great, sweetheart!”

We may not be exercising Centurion-level faith, but we are believing in the same Jesus as the “ancient Romer.” And I do have faith that our daughter will place her ultimate trust in Christ for her salvation.

I’m gonna like that a lot.

“For we live by faith, not by sight.” II Corinthians 5:7

At school, my daughter practices what she calls “sight words”: “the,” “me,” “I,” and “like.”

The irony is that they should be “faith words.”

She’s supposed to know these words on sight because they’re used in English so frequently, but she has to take it on faith that the words are pronounced the way the teacher says.

In contrast to words such as “dog” or “pet” or “cat,” she won’t be able to sound out the word “like.” She’ll have to believe that in certain words the letter “e” is silent.

In truth, there are a good deal more things she’ll have to take on faith.

As I type this, she’s having a fit because she doesn’t want to sleep.

(The irony here is that the fit she’s having is a testimony to her need for sleep.)

I can’t prove to a five-year-old that sleep matters. She doesn’t know what to make of scientific studies. I’ll have to rely on emotional arguments, and at some point, she’ll just have to believe me.

We tell ourselves that our sense experiences are the realest things to us, that seeing is believing.

But more often than not, we have to take people’s words on things.

Paul’s admonition that we should live by faith testifies to how thoroughly our belief in God (the unseen One who made everything we see) should inform our lives.

I want to live a life that models this kind of faith for my daughter and my wife. That’s hard to do, and I’ll need all the practice I can get. Maybe my daughter’s school has the right idea.

“Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Luke 12:7

“I ate all my lunch but two pieces of cheese!” our daughter boasted as I picked her up from school. “I ate all my chicken, my rice, my pickles, my cookies, and all the cheese but two!”

“That’s some serious eating girl,” I said as we walked back to the car. I was more interested in whether or not she had a fit that day or acted up during nap time.

She continued her gustatory rhapsody with my wife when we got back to the car.

“Mama, I ate all my lunch but two pieces of cheese!”

“You were a hungry little tookie!” my wife said.

As we began the fifty minute ride home, more details of her day emerged. She learned more about the letter ‘r’, got to take part in a dance party, played on the playground and (apparently) was kicked in the face by a fellow classmate.

Nothing else was said about the face-kicking incident, an event that seems destined for LEAD STORY status.

Instead, we were assured again and again that she ate all her food, save for two pieces of cheese.

It certainly didn’t affect her appetite at supper tonight. It’s Shrove Tuesday, and our daughter ate two of my wife’s pancakes and downed a piece of King Cake.

I’m not sure why she was so insistent about her food consumption. I do ask her about her lunch each day, but it’s not as though I’ve criticized her for not eating enough. For a child, she has a really good appetite and surprisingly large taste in food.

It’s a small detail from her day that she was proud of. She knew every single food her mama had packed for her, and she knew the final fate of each bite: all consumed save for two pieces of cheese.

I’m glad that she took joy in what in the scheme of things is something pretty small.

It reminds me that God keeps track of something as small as the number of the hairs on my head. Now the numbers of those hairs don’t necessarily say much about who I am. I don’t know how many hairs are on my head.

But the point is that Christ knows us down to the very smallest detail. We are His children, and there’s no detail of our lives that He doesn’t know.

God knows our daughter too — the numbers of hairs on her head, the response of her heart to His love, and yes, even the number of pieces of cheese she had left over after lunch.

I’m very thankful for that.

“[B]e filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord.” Ephesians 5:18b-19

One Sunday morning after service seven or eight years ago, I was singing about about what we were going to do that day to the tune of the hymn we had just sang.

A fellow Sunday School member overheard me and said to my wife and me, “I bet you have a lot of fun in your house!”

It was difficult to tell at the time whether or not the person was being sarcastic. My wife and I have had occasion to quote that line approximately 742 times in the intervening years.

Now, we’ve got a singing five-year-old daughter, and we often wonder aloud what our former Sunday School classmate would say about our house now.

On any given day, our daughter is singing, plinking, or pounding on something.

We’ve caught her singing the words to a Beatles song (“Here Comes the Sun”), a Parliament song (“Flashlight”), and even a song by The Police (“Walking on the Moon”). She has a ukulele she’ll strum, various pencils she’s use as sticks, and an electronic keyboard she’s found out how to noodle on.

Today, she wanted to go collective. She enlisted me and her mother for a project called “Kitty Express!” The songs had no lyrics, and a minute of simultaneous banging and strumming led to the band’s citing artistic differences and breaking up.

Still, it’s delightful (on the whole) to have a daughter who has a song in her heart. It means getting to experience moments like:

1. Her singing a song to the tune of “Come Thou, Almighty King!” in the shower on Saturday night
2. Her still singing “Angels, We Have Heard On High” around the house even though we’re nearly two months past Christmas
3. Her knowing the words to the “Gloria Patri”
4. Her singing “The Blessing” as a capper to our on-the-way-to-school morning jams playlist

When I joined an adult choir in graduate school, the best side effect was having the tune and lyrics for that coming Sunday’s songs stuck in my head all week.

Now, I’ve got singing, humming reminder to have always have the song and music in my heart be God glorifying.

And yeah. Maybe I have thought about starting a band with my daughter.

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:9

One of our daughter’s daily struggles is frustration with not getting it right the first time. She doesn’t really understand the concept of practice.

Today, my parents came and gave her a toy. It’s a top attached to a firing mechanism. My dad got a kick out of it. My daughter immediately dug it, only she wasn’t the one firing the top.

Once my parents headed home, my daughter tried the top for herself. It didn’t go well.

It was late afternoon, and the odds for her susceptibility to an emotional breakdown were high.

First, she was tired. She was physically and emotionally exhausted from extended Grammy and Papa time.

Continue reading “Practice Makes Perfect”

“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24

My daughter had her Valentine’s Day party today. It was a rare Friday when all of her classmates were there. I was happy for her because it meant she could party down with her avowed “best friend.”

She’s five, and so are her classmates, which means they’ll all be heading to kindergarten next year. Our daughter goes to this particular daycare because it’s close to where we work, not our home, which is fifty minutes away.

The upshot? When she starts kindergarten next year, none of her current classmates will be at her school.

Continue reading “Best Friends”

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” Ecclesiastes 12:12b

“You and mama sure have a lot of books!”

This is what our daughter said to me this weekend as we rearranged some furniture, including some bookcases in the front room.

Moving the book cases meant emptying the shelves of their contents, and our daughter wanted to help, so I put her on book-moving duty.

My wife and I do have a lot of books, at least compared to the average American couple. The irony is that we probably don’t have as many books as you would expect in the home of two English professors. I doubt we have as many books in our home as my parents do.

But it’s not just the number of books. Our daughter, after all, has at least a hundred kids books piled up in her room.

It’s that the books we have on our shelves are books of high literature — scholarly editions of Tolstoy and Dickens and Shakespeare — or, even more esoteric, books about books of high literature. You thought Hamlet was too long? Try reading a book of essays about what Hamlet means!

Continue reading “Book Lover”