Of Folded Fortunes
a devotional for summer
the child within
sits under the ornamental cherry
and daydreams of dog-paws and dirt
bird-songs and berries
the longest afternoons in the world
and mother's embrace,
softer than pajamas;
the child within remembers
when time stretched like a cat
and play was work
and bedtime was too-soon
and the stars went on forever;
the child within
is lying on her belly
watching ants at their tasks;
a language I always figured
I would learn, someday,
but somehow
I lost track of time. We had the great joy of hosting visitors this past weekend as they were traveling through from the Washington Coast back east to their home state. Four adults, one child, and two dogs all sharing space and food and fellowship together—a wild ride!
The kiddo, nearly seven years old, is in that wonderful state of childhood when they’re old enough to start understanding how things work, but still young enough to be awed by new and interesting information. Since I don’t work with children professionally anymore I don’t have as much occasion to enter into a child’s-eye-view of the world as I would like, and this weekend was a wonderful mental vacation.
I enjoyed showing our young visitor stuff around the house and property that they hadn’t encountered before, like edible berries in the yard (with their parent’s permission, of course) and a 100+ year-old typewriter that fascinates most kids who visit (a relic of my more financially-freewheeling days in my twenties when my purchases were…uh…fun but questionable).
Something I often notice about myself is a tendency to slip subtly into “teaching mode” when I’m around kids: I am the adult, and I know things. You are the child, and you don’t. When they ask questions, I feel a pressure to answer those questions in the best, most developmentally-appropriate, and most thorough way. I’m a former teacher; I feel I should know how to answer questions properly, make sure the child learns something.
But this young visitor reminded me of something I had forgotten. When children ask questions, maybe only 25% of their motivation is to learn the answer. The other 75% is about building relationship with the person they are asking the question of. And as the adult, I am presented with a choice in my response: Will I demonstrate patience and good humor? Will I overload them with details? Will I ignore them or dismiss them? Will I admit when I don’t know the answer?
And this isn’t just a thing with kids, either. Even though adults are more interested in information when we ask questions, there is still a deep relationship component to the asking and the answering. As relational creatures made by a God who is Pure Relationship, we are wired to want to connect, no matter how simple the interaction might be. We pick up on cues and signals when someone is short with us, rude or impatient, versus when they are kind, helpful, and gracious. It matters.
One of the things that the visiting child is really into right now is folding paper “fortune tellers”. Remember those? And I was genuinely fascinated, because—for whatever reason—I never learned how to fold them when I was in school. I always thought they were cool, and loved playing with the ones my friends made, but assumed they were too elaborate to figure out.
So this kiddo painstakingly and graciously took me through the process, a patient teacher, folding the paper slowly and methodically so I could see and follow the steps with my own sheet. The end result? I folded my very first paper fortune teller, giving my own inner child a well-deserved hug. It’s sitting beside my elbow as I type this, a testament to a lesson learned.
But more importantly than that? It was fun! The lesson was given with grace, and surrounded with jokes and chatter, breaking out the markers to color and decorate, coming up with funny fortunes to write on the inside of our creations.
If God can tuck Himself away in folded paper and carry Himself on the breeze of good laughter, I do believe He did so this weekend. Good fortune and good friendship, indeed.
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Made me smile at the joy and delight experienced by both of you, learning about each other in a completely naturally occurring reversal of roles!
As a parent of three little ones all hovering around that age, this hit hard. So often I find myself focusing on the information and not the relationship. Thank you for the reminder that it's the relationships that really matter.
It's like that Maya Angelou quote, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
God Bless!