My little 4-year-old son’s vocabulary amazes me. He began talking pretty late (I still remember sweating at his two-year check-up and confessing he only spoke two words), but he’s been making up for it ever since! (There’s a lesson there too: Late-bloomers, never fear!) I just have to shake my head when he reports that Heidi is playing recklessly or when he correctly identifies an articulated dump-truck, a skid-steer, and a mini-excavator. Sheesh.
But of course he’s still making sense of all these new words. This past Sunday, we were leaving church and I let him run around in an open field in front of the building. He went and was looking out over a pond surrounded by trees, and called over and asked if I would please come over there. I squished through the wet grass and joined him looking out over the pond. His eyes were wide and he said in a hushed voice full of emotion,
“Mommy, look. It’s so bootiful. I can’t believe my breath.” I took his little hand in mine and kept my dancing eyes looking out over the pond.
“Oh Dutch, I can’t believe my breath either.”
I’m pretty sure it was a mix of not believing his eyes and seeing beauty so great it took his breath away. However those words made it into that order, the expression was so priceless and his little self so earnest, of course I will tuck them away in my heart forever. A precious moment of grasping at words to try to convey the wonder of something too wonderful for words.
I can relate.
As I drove home from church, of course it came into focus that that is exactly how my Heavenly Father is with me. I want so much to be able to use words to communicate the beauty of God, how good He is, how we can live for Him, how every moment is sacred, how we can simplify every aspect of our lives so that it simmers down to a pure and holy passion for the Risen King. And yet the reality is that so often my words come out wrong. More times than not I look over what I’ve written and think how proud it sounds or how it ends wrong or how this is wrong or that is wrong.
How I’ve written, “I can’t believe my breath!” for the world to see.
But God knows my heart. He knows that at least most of the time I earnestly want to use words right. I want to convey the wonder in my heart, how beautiful He is, how much I want people to love Him and know Him and serve Him. The garbage of myself and my pride and ego gets mixed in way too often, but for all the mis-steps and wrong word choices, He knows my heart and loves to hear me express it.
He loves to hear you express it.
Our Father loves to hear your heart. He loves to hear you as you pray, you sing, you write. The words might not be perfect. You might not believe your breath. But it sounds beautiful to Him.
The best part is that you do it.
And as He sees, His beautiful daughter, who so unabashedly expresses her awe-filled worship, He might just look down upon you and smile …
… and not believe His breath.
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This is encouraging in more ways than one, Kari. My youngest son will turn 2 next week and I have worried because he only has about 3 words and a lot of unintelligible babble. This is so different from my other 3 — they were all very verbal from young ages. We have had his hearing checked, etc, etc but now all we can do is encourage him and wait — which I admit is not my strong point. 🙂 I am praying his “bloom” will be all the more beautiful when it comes. Dutch sounds just precious — what wonderful opportunities we have to see God through our children!!