When Your Child Teaches You

Children are amazing.  The good and the bad are amazing.  Last Christmas Cole put together Christmas gifts for all of his friends using his own toys.  This was not something we came up with at all.  It was just something he wanted to do.  We were somewhat amazed.

On Saturday it was finally nice enough to go outside and play.  After lunch we headed to a park.  We went "hiking" and had a jolly time walking from one of the playgrounds to another and we were "explorers".  We got to the far playground and Cole taught us.  We were sitting on a bench and watching Cole.  There were two brothers with a significant age gap playing on one of the playsets.  The older one was being none too kind to the younger.  The younger one was maybe 4.  You could just tell he got picked on by the older one a lot.

Cole was minding his own business climbing up and sliding down.  The older brother went somewhere else and the younger one decided to play on the same set as Cole.  Cole was climbing up one of the structures and the little boy came running up behind him and shoved him in the back with both hands as he was climbing (of course we were infuriated, but we decided to wait and watch how he responded...we were so glad we did).  Little tough guy essentially proceeded to climb over Cole (who was much larger than him) and kind of pushed him aside and climbed ahead and just sat there.  We were ticked, but kept watching as the little boys "parents" played on their phones to see what happened next.  The boy moved on and Cole finished his climb, avoided the little kid, and went down the slide and came over to us.  We expected him to say "did you see that little boy push me" in an indignant fashion.  Instead he said, "I let that boy go ahead of me."  We were blown away that the shoving was not the first thing he mentioned.  We proceeded to walk away from the playground as it was time to go and we had more explorer hiking to do back to the car.  About 15 minutes later Cole said, "that little boy was a really good climber."  He actually praised the child who was so rude to him.  Once again, we were very amazed at his gentle spirit. 

Almost anyone in that situation would have shoved the kid back (I know I wanted to throttle him for being such a little punk) but Cole commented how he used manners and let the little beast by and then even praised him later.  I think our take away lesson is that we are to be that way.  Truly, Cole was turning the other cheek.  He was not being a doormat, and surely if he was in the mood he could have shoved the boy right off the piece of equipment.  We are supposed to turn the other cheek.  We are supposed to show love.  That kid was so obviously bullied by his older brother.  Cole doesn't understand the complexities of all of that, but he did what he should and it made our hearts so very glad.  He taught us. Both of us had some rage going on for the little boy, but that is not how we are called to act.  Just think, if more people, would respond like that when they were wronged perhaps there would be less menace in the world.  Maybe not, but it reminds me of that commercial where the one person does a nice thing for another and so on (paying it forward).  What would it change if we responded to someone's hate with a smile?  Thank you for something to really think about, little boy.  You are such a blessing.

Cole's Deep Sea Prayer

Cole: Dear God, thank you for jellyfish, and thank you for whales, and thank you for squid, and thank you for octopus, and thank you for tube worms, and thank you for viperfish, and thank you for hatchetfish, and thank you for tube worms, and thank you for deep sea spiders, and thank you for viperfish, and thank you for....what else, mommy? 

Mommy: Anglerfish

Cole: and thank you for anglerfish.  In Jesus's name, Amen.

A few from this week and cole quotes

Cole says the funniest and sweetest things. Sometimes they are profound. Yesterday he told his friend who was worried about sleeping alone in her bed "don't worry Heidi, God sleeps with you."
He also followed a little friend around the house last week who was turning on all of the lights and said "don't do that, it wastes electricity."
He is obsessed with cars lately (real ones) and especially likes corvettes, mustangs, camaros, jeep wranglers, hummer h2 and h3s, fj cruisers, and Hondas in general. In fact we took out a Honda book from the library that was a children's biography on the man who started Honda. It was actually very interesting.
He was listening to Wizards in Winter by trans Siberian orchestra the other day and I had not idea he knew what the name of the song was. All of a sudden he blurted out "mommy, where are the wizards?"
He asked me to pray over him one night when he called one of us back to his room. He asked me to pray that God would take away the pictures of pinching bugs from his mind. It was so sweet. We have prayed about things like that before, but he has never asked us to do so.
Pictures are from cole watching the train at bass pro shops and from him helping wash dishes.