After
a delightful Christmas and New Year’s visit, my wife and I drove our nine year
old granddaughter to the airport for her trip home to Asheville, North
Carolina. This adventure all started in mid-December when our “kids” had to go
overseas, so our “Gidgy” flew to Columbus to spend that week with us. At the
end of the week, the three of us jumped onto a plane (a couple of planes,
actually, before all was said and done) and popped over the pond ourselves to
meet the kids and spend Christmas there together. When the Family Christmas
Adventure was over, Our Gidgy flew back with us, intending to fly home to
Asheville after New Year’s.
As I said, it was delightful . . .
and a fellow learns a lot about how a nine year old brain works after a three
week exposure to one. Now the fact that I have a granddaughter in the first
place implies that I also have a daughter (or a son as the case could be, but
in my case a daughter) who was once a nine year old herself, so I should
already have a pretty firm grasp of how a nine year old brain works, right?
Admittedly, yes, I should; however, I’ve also learned over these past nine years
that grandparent perspective and parental perspective is radically different. Oddly,
the petty annoyances of the 80s have become adorable and memorable events here
in the second decade of the 21st century.
For example, I arrived home from the
University a few days ago to find that My Gidgy had discovered a ball of very
colorful Christmas lights in a box Grandmother was using to put away Christmas
decorations that we’d set up after Thanksgiving. She had plugged-in this soccer
ball sized wad of lights, and just as soon as I entered the door exclaimed,
“Help me hang up these lights, Grapper.”
“But Christmas is over, Gidgy.”
“But these are so beautiful.”
By this time the 80s Dad in me would
probably have launched into an explanation of why these lights need to be put
away until next year, that while they are indeed beautiful, they really are out
of place since Christmas is past, yada yada, blah blah; however, the second
decade of the 21st century Grandfather in me said,
“Okay, where do want to hang them”
and at her instruction plugged them into a receptacle near a window, draped
them over the curtain, looped them across the corner of the room, over the
window on that wall, then over the front door, leaving a trail of lights into
the dining room.
To me, it looked really quirky; but to My Gidgy, “It’s
so beautiful.”
I wonder how much of what’s beautiful to me looks
quirky to God?
My beautiful projects, my hard work, my goals, plans
and ambitions, must seem so small, and perhaps even ugly to him. Yet in me
there is this keen sense of awareness of his personal strength and help in
executing these very goals, plans and ambitions.
Donning a proverbial nine year old brain is precisely
what Jesus did when he became “Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with
us.” (Mathew 1:23) And keep in mind that later, in Mathew 18:3, Jesus said that
“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into
the kingdom of heaven.”
I have never told My Gidgy that her art was stupid or
ugly or immature. I try my best to see it all with a nine year old brain . . .
and when I do, it is most certainly beautiful! It would do all of us good to
view life more with a nine year old brain than with our old, worn out, cynical
ones. We’d hurt fewer people, and we’d encourage more beauty . . . even if that
beauty wasn’t exactly everything we thought it should be.
