This past Saturday night, just before Emily went to bed, I was rocking her in the rocking chair. I feel so incredibly blessed that she still lets me do this from time to time, even at 5 (and a half!).
Suddenly, she burst into tears! She said “I don’t want to grow up. I want to stay a kid forever.” I assured her that she had tons of time to enjoy being a kid, and when it was time for her to be a grownup, she would WANT to be a grownup! She was worried about outgrowing her bunk bed (a twin!), so I told her about how I slept on a bed that size until I was a much older grownup and it fit just fine.
Then the conversation got around to us moving (Ahhh! The real worry!). We know that about a year from now our family will be moving. We don’t know where yet. Most of the time, Emily is super excited about it. God blessed her with an amazing sense of adventure and curiosity. She wants to visit more countries and states than I think I even knew existed at her age.
However, this time, she was bawling. She was scared and worried about the move. I held her close and told her she could ask me anything. That Daddy and I had both moved many, many times in our life, so we could tell her all about it. She’s moved before, but she was too young to remember it. Now, she’s starting to process the concept of moving, and trying to figure it all out. See, she’s a detail person and a planner. That’s who she is. So, rather than focusing on the adventure of it, right now she was focused on the little details.
What was she worried about? Well, here were a couple of her questions.
“What if my new bedroom doesn’t have a window?”
I assured her that her bedroom, would in fact, have a window! She loves to look out her bedroom window!
“What if we are driving to our new home and we have to stop, but we can’t sleep in the van….where will we sleep?”
Obviously she had forgotten the many times we’ve slept in a hotel room on the way to a destination! I reminded her of the hotel stops when we went to Florida this past year, and that settled her mind.
Last time she did this, she was concerned because she “would never get to go to the zoo again!”, but was fine once I showed her that there are zoos in or near most cities, and that she would definitely get to go to the zoo again!
She was also curious about having a yard to play in, and since I don’t know if we’ll be in a house or apartment at first, I couldn’t promise that. But once I told her that apartments have swimming pools, she said she wanted us to live there!
Our sweet girl is not a big fan of change. She likes to plan ahead and know what’s going to happen….exactly how it’s going to happen. So this first move will be challenging for us. We’ll have to give her lots of details, without giving her ones she doesn’t need to know at her age.
As she was worrying about whether or not her bedroom would have a window, I was reminded of Christ in Matthew 6:25-39. He tells us not to worry because he will take care of us, even more than he does the birds and the flowers. He’s already in the details. He sees the big picture, when we only see what’s right in front of us.
Just the same, I can worry about where we are going to be stationed, what our house will look like, if it will have a microwave built-in, whether I’ll have a bathtub or just a shower…..Or I can just relax, take it as it comes, and trust that God has it all planned out for us.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:6-7)