in the kitchen.
Last night my five-year-old scooted a chair from the kitchen table over to where I was chopping lettuce at the counter. “Can I help you make?” she asked in that funny way of hers when she wants to help out with dinner.
Inwardly, I groaned. If anyone has ever made dinner with a little helper like Margot, then you know that their “help” is usually more of a hindrance than actual assistance. It’s messier, it’s slower, and it requires far more patience than I’m capable of at 5 pm.
“Sure, you can help,” I answered with a sigh, glancing at the clock and mentally calculating how much longer dinner prep would take. But Margot didn’t actually need my response; she was already holding one of those small plastic knives, reaching for the head of lettuce resting on the cutting board. Before I could get in another word, she started hacking away at it, mutilating the lettuce into large chunks that would never fit on a fork.
“Wait, wait, let me help—” I started to say, but Margot just looked up at me and grinned.
“Am I doing a good job, Mama?”
I looked at her standing there in her pajamas, so tall on the kitchen chair, and my eyes pricked with tears at the sight of her chubby fingers gripping the handle of that wayward plastic knife.
Being a parent is such a strange thing, isn’t it? We have front-row seats to our kids growing up, watching as our babies are slowly whittled away, their bodies stretching and growing at an alarming rate that none of us remember agreeing to. But when we slow down and pay attention, we can still find signs of their littleness.
Like Margot’s dimpled hands so eager to help me make dinner.
Last night, I felt a stirring in my chest reminding me that my Father in Heaven was very aware of this moment, quietly observing me and my daughter in the kitchen.
Is this how you feel about me? I asked in quiet awe. You really love me this much?
I felt His response like arms wrapping around me in a familiar embrace. “I love you that much and more,” He whispered back. It was a brief but beautiful moment of clarity, a flash of brilliance against a Thursday night sky that left streaks of light in my vision.
Aren’t we all just children, stumbling after our Father, pushing up chairs to where He’s working and watching His hands in action? We throw ourselves into the mix without much thought and certainly not enough training, making messes with reckless abandon all while anxiously asking, “Am I doing a good job?”
We are children of a God who’s not afraid to let us in the kitchen. He’s not annoyed by the messes we make or the extra time it takes. He’s patient when we are not, loving when we don’t deserve it, and reassuring with His constant presence. I believe that He’s right there next to us as we attempt to follow His recipes, our toddler hands so ineffectual but trying all the same.
“Watch how I do it,” He says with a smile, demonstrating once again an unending pattern of love and kindness and goodness and grace. “We’ve got plenty of time to figure this out together.”
I think God’s greatest thrill is watching His kids grow up. And He’s not just in the front row, He’s completely sold out for each of us.
How grateful I am that He lets me scoot my chair over, that He never turns me away in my littleness. How thankful I am that He gives me tiny glimpses of His parenting as I parent my own sweet children.
What a gift. What a life.
What a Father.
