I forgot...

I forgot...

I'm ashamed to say, I'm forgetting what it's like to be a child. When I was a kid, I swore to myself that I would never forget how hard it was to be a kid so that I would always have empathy for my child. But tonight, I forgot.

We had a meeting at my house tonight. A group of us meet once a week to plan Sunday's worship service. This week, everyone met at my house. One of the group members brought some amazing home made cookies for desert. You see, we always share a meal together before the meeting. In the few transitional minutes between the meal and getting started with the official meeting part, my friend passed her cookies around the room.

The cookies were so wonderful, I ate mine much too quickly and I wanted more. I didn't get more for two reasons: 1) I really didn't need additional cookies and 2) the pan of cookies was on the other side of the room and I didn't want to disrupt the meeting to walk across the room just for a cookie (although I would have walked much father for one of these cookies, I just didn't want to disrupt the meeting.)

A couple of times Elizabeth would pop into the living room to check on the status of the adults. Usually I would shoo her away. But this one time, one of the woman asked Elizabeth to get her purse on my side of the room. As Elizabeth crossed back and forth, I asked her to bring me a cookie. After all, her six-year-old petite frame was much less intrusive than my clumsy 40-something frame.

Elizabeth obediently went to get me a cookie. But she stopped and started to whisper with the cookie baker. My first reaction was to become angry with Elizabeth. She knew better than to disrupt adults during the meeting (and knowing better hadn't stopped her a couple of times earlier in the evening.) I guess I was feeling guilty that I wanted her to be the disruptive force so I could hide behind her youth, but I suddenly felt very angry with her. I was going to yell at her in front of all of the other adults.

But then, something happened. I heard the cookie baker whisper, "Yes, your mother may have another cookie." Elizabeth picked up a cookie and brought it directly to me.

She wasn't being disruptive at all! She was being polite. She wasn't going to take a cookie out of someone else's pan without asking permission.

I suddenly realized how the Grinch must have felt when his heart grew three sizes too big!