Mindless Juices

My little boy is 3 years old.  I certainly didn’t expect myself to be celebrating his birthday or the holidays around it like I am.  I look back on the past few years and wonder about how my life has changed… how I’ve changed.  I went back and read many of the posts around this time three years ago.  I was amazed at hiw I just didn’t get it.

It’s weird, and hard, to look back and realize you’ve been a useless tool.  In this case, I mean a tool is something one uses to accomplish something.  I believe we’re all God’s tools, but we choose just how useful we’re going to be and just how much we’re going to build.  Frankly, we can also choose to be destructive tools.  But, perhaps the worst tool is a useless one.

I could go on about the useless part, but I think it’s more important to talk about the realization that perhaps the best way for me to be a useful tool to be my little boy’s father and teach him how to be a useful tool for God.  Instead of thinking about all the things that I want to do, I’m simply trying to be obedient.  It’s in this simple concept that I’ve learned just how a Father looks at obedience.

As a child, we simply want things.  Whatever the reason, we want it and we often aren’t thinking about the consequences of how we spend our time or money or energy to ge or do the thing we want.  For example, a young boy might play video games from the time he gets home through the night until he can’t stay awake anymore.  He forego doing homework, spending time with his friends or family, and even sleeping and eating!  He’ll be tired, unsuccessful, and lonely, but he’ll have gotten what he wanted.  However, if he is obedient, he will do his homework, eat dinner with his family, and go to sleep at a reasonable hour.  Maybe there won’t be time for video games at all.  But, the weekend will eventually come and he can spend hours playing his games with the permission of his parents.

Here’s the best part: For being obedient and denying himself those selfish desires, his parents are so proud of him, they buy him a new video game for no reason (meaning no birthday or Christmas).  And that’s the part I’ve really understood since The Boy’s been old enough to understand obedience.  When he’s obedient, I *want* to bless him and give him all the desires of his heart.  I want to spoil him.

So, I believe it’s the same with our heavenly Father.  So, as His children, we must be a useful tool.  We should to choose to be better than we are.  And it is, most definitely, a choice.  Left to our own, we will choose to either be useless or destructive or perhaps both.  The amazing thing is that all the while, we’ll think we’re getting exactly what we want, like the little boy who plays video games all night long.  So, we must do things we don’t want to do sometimes in obedience because it will ultimately be what’s best for us.  Not only because we sometimes need to do things we don’t want to do, but also because our Father wants to bless His obedient child.

But, enough about me.  Yesterday, The Boy turned three.  The past year has been one defined by growth.  He’s grown tremendously in his ablities, language, obedience, skills, and relationships.  He tells stories, “reads” books (tells a story based on the pictures he’s seeing or whatever he remembers from me reading it to him), speaks in sentences, sleeps through the night, feeds himself well, and randomly says “I love you” and gives hugs and kisses (my favorite thing).

He struggles to remember the things that he’s always supposed to do (the human condition?).  For example, saying “Yes, Daddy,” or “Please,” or “Thank you,” or telling me he needs to use the potty.  In that way, he’s a pretty traditional boy… he gets caught up in whatever he’s doing and forgets to do the things he is supposed to do.  It’s a struggle we’ll both be trying to overcome together and I hope I can teach him as I learn it, too.

But, that’s not the only way he’s “a boy.”  He very much enjoys playing ball, blocks, puzzles, and video games.  He also likes pretend to cook, reading, singing, and riding his bike.  Oh yeah! This year, very recently in fact, he learned to ride a tricycle by himself.  He’s very good at naming animals and I’m very much looking forward to a trip to the zoo next year when the weather turns.

I won’t lie and say that this past year has been wonderful.  It has been the worst in my life.  Certainly not having anything to do with The Boy.  If anything, being his father has been the only consistantly good thing.  I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am to be his Daddy.  I try to tell him often of how proud I am and give him hugs and reward him and spend time with him.  I’m looking forward to my obedience to my heavenly Father resulting in me being able to do all of that even more as I teach him what I learn, but am also blessed by my Father and am able to bless my child, too.