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| Charlie and Adelaide, playing with cousin, Emaline |
No one got physically hurt. I didn't lose my cool and raise my voice. No, this mistake could be easily overlooked. But I'd rather not sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't matter, because to my kids, it really did.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a stickler about being on time (or early) for everything I do. My personality serves this need in me to keep to a schedule and I have learned to respect others' time, which I think is generally a good thing. Sometimes though I lose sight of what is most important - sticking to a schedule or living with an ounce of sanity by savoring passing moments.
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| Me consoling Charlie at dinnertime. This is a regular scene. |
Adelaide is taking a gymnastics class for a few weeks, a little birthday present that we got for her via Groupon. Yesterday was her third class and it is just about 10 minutes from our house. I was working on getting all of the kids in the car about 25 minutes before the class would be starting and it is quite a process to get the three kids ready to go and in the car by myself. Adelaide and Charlie asked if they could open the garage and head out to the car and I said yes, since I was coming right behind them. Instead of hopping straight into the car, they wandered behind the car and found about a dozen worms spread across the top of the driveway where the garage door opens. The worms were tiny little things and were all living. It must have rained sometime in the night and drove them all out. Just a couple of weeks earlier, there was a worm struggling on the driveway and I picked it up and threw it into the garden and explained to the kids that worms need to live in mud.
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| Adelaide playing with cousin, Emaline |
Adelaide ran to me when she saw all of these worms and asked if she and Charlie could rescue them and put them back into the garden. I had one thing on my mind - getting in the car and going where we needed to be. So I told Adelaide, no, not this time. We would see if the worms were there when we got home and we could tend to them then. While I was buckling her in she said with sincerity that she just wanted to take care of God's earth, by caring for the worms.
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| Charlie enjoying some popcorn at the church's Easter egg hunt |
I should have stopped there. She wasn't being defiant, she was living to her purest nature of wanting to help these tiny helpless worms. And Charlie was learning from her - he was just as passionate as she was, even though at 2 years old he couldn't understand it the same way she did. But I preceded to get everyone loaded and tried not to think about the little worms.
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| My niece, Emaline, playing dress-up |
When we got home, the first thing that the kids did was check on the worms. And what did they find? Dead worms. Every single one of them. The sun was out, and not surprisingly, the worms didn't make it. Adelaide and Charlie were crushed. Adelaide felt like she had failed these worms. She even talked about it again later last night, about how she was just wanting to take care of God's creation.
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| Adelaide playing her favorite thing - dress up |
I apologized to her. This was a big deal to her, and all I could think about was a class that doesn't matter very much and we still got there with time to spare. I want to learn to create more margin in my life. I want to leave room to care for others, even helpless little worms. I don't want to stop respecting others' time, but I do want to chill out sometimes. I want this to be a reminder for me to sometimes see like through the eyes of my sweet children, who are silly, and reckless. Beautiful and spontaneous. Who laugh at the smallest things and whose hearts get broken by the smallest things. I want to have a heart like a child and a faith like a child.
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