“Close the door behind you, please… I said close the door!”
I’m not proud to say that I raised my voice the second time, as my toddler ran out the front door and down the concrete steps. We had just had a standoff about the merits of drawing with sidewalk chalk on a wooden bench inside the house, and to my satisfaction, she had decided to take her chalk outside. No sooner had she gone out the door, however, than we stumbled upon another recurring point of contention: closing the front door behind you.
As I had explained to her many times before—with impeccable clarity and admirable calmness—this keeps the bugs out and the cold air in, for her good and the good of the whole family. But on this humid midsummer afternoon, one of those “excessive heat warning” days in DC, I was in the mood for obedience, not arguments with an only sporadically rational interlocutor. My strong-man tactics didn’t work. She fled, cackling the way only a mischievous toddler who knows her dad doesn’t really want to get up and chase her can.
She made it about two steps before she tripped. Down went the toddler, away flew the chalk, and out came the tears. And just like that, my exasperation evaporated. Suddenly she was calling out for me to come and get her, not running away. As I picked her up and held her close, I realized how the Father must love us even—especially—when we fall.
How many times have I fled from what the Father has asked of me, for my good and the good of the whole Body of Christ? The good Lord knows that I am only sporadically rational myself. And how many times has that led to my own fall, my own concrete stumbling block? Maybe next time I’ll remember that before the fall, and not just after.
