Life Lesson at Hot Dog on a Stick

So yesterday I took my kids, Payton, Grace and Michael to the mall. Why? Yesterday was $1 Tuesday at Hot Dog on a Stick, which is a great excuse to not cook. We got our food and proceeded to eat, and something interesting occured.

My youngest Michael is just twenty months old, and he hasn't quite figured out the process of eating. He has a tendency to stuff his mouth until he can't fit anymore in. Then he proceeds to chew, and sometimes he swallows and sometimes he spits it out. My way of controlling this behavior is to not put all of his food in front of him at one time, but rather one bite at a time...portion control. :) So I was doing the same thing last night, breaking off a piece of the corndog, letting him eat that bite, then when he was done swallowing I'd set another piece in front of him. In the midst of taking care of my other two children I'd be a bit late in tearing off another piece for him. At this point he'd point to his corndog and grunt. At which point I'd give him another piece. Then it happened. I noticed that he was swallowing the previous piece, so I put another one in front of him. Apparently he wasn't paying attention in that moment, his focus was elsewhere, and he did not notice that I had placed the next piece of corndog in front of him, but below his eye level. He finished swallowing the bite that was in his mouth, turned to me pointed to his corndog and grunted. At this point I pointed back to the piece that was in front of him. He then pointed back at me and grunted again with a bit more passion. I did what I did, then he did what he did (he's got a bit of a stubborn streak, I have no idea where he gets this from :) and finally I picked up the piece that I had placed in front of him and lifted it to his eye level. At this point he took it from me and ate it.

I think there's a lesson in there somewhere, and taught by a twenty month old who can't speak, but can and does communicate very effectively. How often do we lose perspective? How often do we take the posture of "gimme, gimme, gimme!" that we miss out on what's already been given to us? So often the answers or solutions are right in front of us, just not at eye level. We get so busy in being arrogant and then being stubborn about our arrogance that we miss it altogether. Then some of us are engaged in looking up to the heavens for the answers thinking that the solutions are going to to come by raising our eyes higher, when that's really been the problem all along. The solutions are in front of us, but below eye level because it requires humility to look down and bow our heads. Until next time...

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