Three-Year-Olds

In two weeks we would have a three-year-old in our house. I've been thinking a lot about what that would look like. I LOVE three! I was just telling someone the other day that it might be my all-time favorite age. They are so excited about life! (They still love their Mama!) They're so verbal and the constant attempts at new vocabulary end up with the cutest expressions. Their tiny little life-perspectives are exemplified in all the ways they try to learn new things-pulling on what they already know to make more assumptions, often either completely wrong or shockingly profound. Soaking in all the grammar around them like little sponges. And always so cute. So, so cute. As I was mulling over all of this, I stopped, in total awe of their tiny little life perspectives-TINY little life perspectives.

That's me, I thought.
I'm three. 

"You have searched me, Lord,

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You  discern my going and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain."
Psalms 139:1-6

Your knowledge, Lord, is too lofty for me to attain. YOU KNOW ME BETTER THAN I DO!
My three-year-old perspective is vain in comparison to your all-knowing, all-seeing eyes. 

My heart wandered back to my three-year-old. The ways he would test and learn, try and try again to grasp this life just a little more--explore with his speech, ask with his eyes, search with his actions. I would laugh with him, smile with him, marvel in his tiny little thoughts, cry with frustration, agonize over the trying times, all the while teaching and showing truth and more life. The perspective would broaden. Connections would be made. Vocabulary would grow, and progress, and we would keep guiding him through this life.

So I cry out to my God for more eyes to see, more ears to hear. For a three and a half-year-old's perspective, instead of just a three-year-old. Show me the big picture, Lord!

"How precious to me are your thoughts,

God!

How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of

sand--

when I awake, I am still with you."

Psalms 139:17-18

Once again I'm left longing for the eternal perspective. The one I can't have yet. This birthday that will come and go without anyone here to celebrate-what is the Lord whispering?

"You'll have a thousand birthdays with him again someday." 
"Trust me."
"This is like a drop in the bucket."

But also,

"I hear you." 
"I feel your ache." 
"You are not alone."

"For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and 

wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the 

depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were

written in your book

before one of them came to be."

Psalms 139:13-16

All the days ordained for me...before one of them even came to be. I will praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.