Gifts and Gratitudes - a 5-Day Reading PlanIhe Atụ

Our little girl’s laughter makes me laugh too, and I can hear her going through the house, gleefully recording all time and space with an old point-and-shoot camera. Child and mother, we’ve exchanged places.

Eventually, she comes looking for me, her face filled with lens, her every step activating another click. I’m separating whites from darks in the laundry room.

“Can you show all the pictures back to me now?” She holds the camera out to me, as long as the neck strap will allow. Nothing can restrain her giddiness.

Settling into a pile of laundry, our heads lean toward each other and touch. Her arm around my neck, we scroll through her photos on the glowing screen. A picture of me bent over her, showing her which button to press. I’m a mountain over her lens. I can feel the laughter rising up in her, and she cups her hand over her mouth to catch the bubbling pleasure. She’s enchanted by her photos. I grin.

The frame of a table. A doorknob. A bookshelf skewed on a tilt.

Yet her photos surprise, every single one. Why? It takes me a moment to make sense of it—it’s the vantage point. At thirty-six inches, her height presents an angle that is unfamiliar to me and utterly captivating: The study ceiling arches like a dome, her bed a floating barge. The stairs plunge like a gorge. She’s Alice in Wonderland, all the world grown Everest-like around and above her.

“Do you like them, Mama?” She pats my cheek with her laughter-drenched hand.

I can only murmur, flicking through her gallery. “Marvelous . . . just marvelous.”

She giggles, and I lay the camera aside and tickle her soft belly and she throws her head back, bliss, and I kiss our sweet little girl, and she laughs, breathless.

I want this kind of crazy, happy joy, God. How to see the world again through eyes like hers? To live in the wide-eyed wonder of a world where you are small and the world around you is larger than life, so otherworldly . . .

When you live small and in awe, you experience this great joy in God.

Prayer

Dear Lord, make me decrease that You may increase, and keep me small and humble. Cause me to embrace that simplest of truths—that all wonder and worship can only grow out of smallness.