Tight Fisted

Having a child is an amazing thing; even more amazing is how much such a small child can teach you, the adult! Ever since Coralyn was born (well, even during my pregnancy actually) God has been using my baby girl to teach me quite a few things about my relationship with Him.

Coralyn has been eating solids for about 2 months, but now she can feed herself things like bananas and cheerios, which we just added to her menu this past weekend. It's quite fun to watch her eat. I set her in the highchair and put the tray on to "lock" her in. I usually don't do this fast enough apparently since Coralyn whines, wanting her demand for a snack to be met immediately. As soon as I put the cheerios on the tray, she grabs for them and gets as many as she can. She forms little fists around her treasures and then proceeds to try to fit her entire fist in her mouth and retrieve her snack from inside her closed hand. Thus, quite a few cheerios end up back on the tray, in her lap, or somewhere on her face...basically everywhere but inside her mouth. She eventually gets all the cheerios to her tummy, with a little help from me as I put the fallen cheerios back on the tray and she goes for round 2 (then 3, 4, and sometimes even 5).

As I watched Coralyn and helped her through this process, I was reminded that I often try to grab as much as I can too. Only I'm not filling my hands with cheerios. Instead, I reach for money, clothes, stuff for the house, friends, and other such things. These are not bad things. In fact, they are gifts from God that He wants me to enjoy. The problem comes when I get my hands full and then make fists around all that I have managed to squeeze into my fingers. Then these good gifts that God has given me can't serve their purpose, and I can't enjoy them. Oh that I would remember not to be so tight fisted, that I would give God "all my hands can hold" (as the song goes) and find that in so doing I end up with more than I can ever hold in the first place.