Bellybuttons and Bubbles
The conversation goes something like this:
“Up”
Eleanor, do you want me to pick you up?
“Ess” (accompanied by a furious nod of the head).
Eleanor, where’s your bellybutton?
(Lifts shirt) “Baba”
Eleanor, what’s this?
(Stares in awe at the bubbles) “Baba”
Bellybutton, bubbles, and babies are very similar in pronunciation and all high on her favourite things list.
Eleanor, my nearly 18 month old cuddle bug, is starting to find her words, and extremely frustrated when she can’t communicate well enough to get what she wants right away. But in her own little way, her comprehension is incredible and her communication just where it needs to be for me, her parent, to know what she’s trying to say.
I am reminded of this stage with Elizabeth and how for about one year I was her translator. We would go somewhere like the grocery store and she would be babbling away to anyone who smiled at her. During a breathe for air I would quickly jump in to translate for her. As her mother, I knew her language. I knew what made her happy and sad and the things she liked and didn’t. Even when she was incoherent to everyone else, I knew.
In the same way, God knows what I’m saying. I can be incoherent to everyone else, the thoughts all jumbled up in my head, but he understands. He knows me so intimately, what makes me laugh and cry, what I like and do not like, what I need and what I am asking for.
It is humbling when I consider that to God I am like a little child. And yet so freeing. For while we are called to mature and grow, Jesus also tells us to have the faith of a child. When I begin to see myself truly as a “child” of God, I feel a sense of relief and freedom to be myself with him, to ask silly questions and have random conversations with him and not worry about how I am being perceived or if I am being misunderstood.
Maybe you need to hear this today: God loves you where you are right now, not who you are striving to become. He knows what makes you laugh and groan and what gets you choked up. He knows what you need right now. So talk to him. You don’t have to have it all figured out.
Our conversations with God probably will go beyond belly buttons and bubbles, but no matter what we bring to him, his love and grace for us will not change.