Excited to Crawl

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”

Proverbs 16:9

Are you ever taken out of today?  One minute you are looking at your calendar, assessing your goals, planning the future for your children, getting caught up in both trivial and important matters, and the next thing you know you are no longer in today?   So often it takes writing a check and attempting to remember what month it is to snap me out of my “future/planning” or “past/what if” focus.  As I pen a “6” for June and follow with the day and year, my eyes grow wide as I wonder where the last three months went and how another month is a day away!  Maybe you’ve been there before.

When you are dealing with a “catch up” mentality, be it in finances, family, friendships, or any other matter, you can certainly find yourself stuck in yesterday’s ruminations or tomorrow’s hopes and fears.  As most of you know, Meade and I spend much time, effort and prayer in one of our own catch-up scenarios: John’s development.  (There are others, to be sure: feeling we need to reclaim parts of the last few years, feeling we need to catch up in terms of the number of children we have, feeling a sense of urgency about catching up as a mom… being a mom who has been at it for 3.5 years but “behind” where most moms of 3.5 years are in terms of disciplining, planning for school, enrolling in VBS, the list goes on.)

But back to the catch-up scenario of John’s development for this post…  I’ll never forget John’s advocate at the Institutes (the person in charge of coordinating his care and prescribed home program) insisting we must see crawling as worthy, it must be good enough, it must be an admirable accomplishment.  That we must know this in every fiber of our beings… keeping our eyes solely on that next step as we encourage John and love him exactly where he is and with exactly what he is presently working on.

I feel this week I have made some sort of transition…. crossing over from eyes fixed on walking and milestones potentially down the road to being excited about this current step John is working on: army crawling.  Maybe it is because I am freer than before, maybe it is because I see this skill emerging and that gives me some hope, or maybe it is because the Holy Spirit is shining His light into my heart and illuminating my perspective.

Regardless, today I agree with John’s advocate.  Crawling… that next step, today’s step… is worthy.  Physical crawling for John.  “Life crawling” for me.  And for today at least, that puts me right where I belong.  In today.

Due to God’s grace and love, I’m excited about what this day is bringing.  Glamorous or not, I am excited to crawl. 

(Pictures below)

I am reminded of the classic song by Rich Mullins, “Step by Step.”  I am grateful God leads us one step at a time, giving us the gift of today.  Email subscribers, click here to listen to the song.