From Years Gone By

I'm cleaning out some files this morning and came across an email that I sent out, then printed to keep for myself, several years ago. The date on it shows August of 2001, shortly before we learned of Troy's job in Abilene. Riley would have been 3:

Riley and I were alone in the car on the way to church tonight for a pizza dinner, then church.

Riley told me, "Mommy, God is making the cut on my leg better."

"Riley, God just takes such good care of us."

"Yep, and there's someone else up in heaven who takes care of us. Can you guess who it is, Mommy?"

"It must be Jesus."

"Yep, Jesus has a beard, but God doesn't."

"Riley, what does God look like?"

"Like Mommies and Daddies. Only my daddy has a mustache and God doesn't" (evidently God has no facial hair).

(brief pause as I bask in the thought of my son associating God with his parents)

"Mommy, what do the bottoms of pizzas look like?"

I would not have been able to re-tell that story, but now that I've read it, I remember vivid details of it and how I laughed for the fleeting theological discussion to turn toward pizzas.

We had a similar conversation this morning while I was weeding. I told him that, like my Bible reading and knowing God, I wanted weeding to be a one-time deal. Do it and be done. But weeding doesn't work that way, and neither does my prayer time because Satan is out there in the world. You have to stay on top of it every day.

Riley commented, "Satan is the weed. We have to keep him out of there."

We also noticed that a weed that had been let go for too long was all but impossible to get out and we had to dig almost to China to get to the root. We decided that it's best to get sin out as soon as you can before you have to dig to China to get it out.

Do you ever feel like the job of leading these questioning minds on The Path is way out of your league?