Children as Parables

One of the reasons that I love working with children is because they can be great parables for my own life. Children are much more open with their emotions, say what they mean, and do not over analyze things. Jesus calls us to enter the kingdom of God like children because they are innocent, untainted by the world, and open. Here are some stories that God has spoken to me through.

On the first day of school, I was taking my kinders on the field to run a lap. I was running in a line with them to teach them how to run around the perimeter of the field. One girl fell down and scraped her knee. For kindergarteners this can be very traumatic, they can feel like they are dying. It can take a while for them to recover from a fall. The next time when I took them out onto the field the little girl did not want to run a lap for fear that she would fall again. Every day she says the same thing to me. Because her first experience being on the field was being hurt, that is what she associates the environment with and fears the same experience will happen to her. It reminded me of how often we have a first experience of something that we hold onto and assume the same thing will happen. Especially if we are hurt in relationships, we can not let go of that experience, assuming the same thing will happen each time.

Another little girl will hide her face in her hands when she is sad. When I try to engage with her, she says nothing and buries her face. I say to her, “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong. I can’t help you if you hide from me.” Sometimes I feel like I respond to God that way. I just want to bury my face and hide. Although God knows what is wrong with us, he is always inviting me tell him why I am upset. He gets down on my level and waits for me to respond to him as I do with my students.

I spent about a week with my nephew right after he was born, helping my sister out. Newborns really just sleep and eat. Since my sister was mainly handling the eating part, my time with him was while he slept. Most of the times that I held him he was sound asleep. But I was not bothered by this. I just enjoyed being with him. Now that he is a little older, he does a lot of more than eating and sleeping. He crawls, smiles, plays, makes faces, laughs. But he doesn’t need to do those things for me to love him. I still enjoy watching him sleep in his car seat on the way home. Even when he poops over the cute little outfit I bought him, I still love him. And isn’t that a good reminder of the way that God interacts with us. When we feel like we need to do things for him or prove ourselves to him, really all he wants is to spend time with us.

One thing that I am trying to work on with my kinders is walking in a straight line and keeping our hands to ourselves. What I expect of them in line is that they keep their hands by their sides, (I call out to them, show me soldiers, and the straighten up) face forward, and pay attention to where the line is moving. But it is a very difficult task as kinders have a lot of energy and are easily distracted. They often flail limbs of their bodies any which way, causing them to hit other children unintentionally. They are distracted by a bug, stick, or a noise and hold up the line. I get frustrated with them in how often I to stop and refocus them to get in line and repeat the same instructions. But how often an I easily distracted in prayer and have to learn things from God over and over again.

My roommate reminded me how emotions are kind of like kindergarteners. For those of us who are “J”s out there, we like things to be organized and predictable. Js who are also Fs are often frustrated when are emotions are unpredictable and come up at inconvenient time. Often I find myself trying to organize my emotions like in kinders. I want them to be in a nice straight line and follow me the way that I want them to go. But often them push, and fall, are distracted and sway from the way that I want them to go. I have to remember that my kinders are 5 and it’s the nature of their age to be distracted and need to move their body all around. In the same way I can not manage my emotions and force them to behave the way that I want them to.