Put the crayons down
3 June 2009
Over the weekend, we bought McKenna her first box of crayons. She loves them. She’ll color with them for about thirty seconds, then gather about seven in her tiny hands and walk around. She’ll set them inside the fireplace, carry them to the couch, then put them on the lid of the kitchen trash. These are the “large” crayons, so seven is quite a handful for her, and she’s regularly dropping one or two. Yesterday when she was doing this, it was about thirty minutes before naptime, which meant every dropped crayon was a catastrophe. And after about ten catastrophes in two minutes, I’d had enough.
I steered McKenna back to the coloring book and said, “Girl, this is what the crayons are for. And it’d be a lot easier if you didn’t carry so many at the same time. Why don’t you put down a few?”
As the words escaped my mouth, I wondered if God hadn’t been shaking his head at me recently and saying the same thing. Particularly this week, as we prepare to leave on our first family vacation, and I want to cross a thousand things off my to-do list before we go. I wonder, during my various freak outs, if God hasn’t been saying, “Girl, that’s not why I gave you these blessings. You don’t have to do so much. Why don’t you put down a few things?”
Will this revelation stop me from freaking out come this weekend when we head out of town, yet I didn’t accomplish everything I wanted? I really hope so. Fortunately, God’s proven to be much more patient with me than I am with McKenna. He can handle my over-the-top reactions, and will very gently say to me, as gently as if it’s the first time we’ve gone through this, “Girl, put the crayons down.”
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