While driving the other night we drove past a McDonald's. My four year old and I have this conversation:
Nick: "Hey, Mommy! Look! It's a McDonald's!".
Me: "Yep, sure is buddy."
There is a pause while he's in deep thought. Know how sometimes you can just hear them thinking?
Nick: "That's so 'mazin'!" ("it's amazing", for those that don't speak Munchkin fluently).
Nick: "That's just so cool!"
My response here was to laugh. I've thought a lot of things concerning that certain restaurant over my lifetime, but amazing was honestly never on my list of adjectives to use. It didn't take much brain power to see from his perspective why that place is just so amazing to him. Here's where I have to throw in that he was deathly afraid of parks and jungle gyms when he came to live with us 10 months ago. Our family has taught him a new phrase; "Have fun!". While learning what fun is, I have to admit that certain indoor playgrounds have been used in our lessons on how to just be a little kid and have fun.
My thoughts then turned to my surprise at his use of the word 'amazing'. I was shocked he knew it! When he moved in with us 10 months ago he was stringing together 2 and three words but he was mostly incomprehensible and used baby jargon along with 3-alarm screaming fits to make himself understood. So then I was thinking about how he'd have heard the word and it hit me straight on. A week earlier when the weather had been simply beautiful we had all gone outside to play in the backyard. Lia and I started pulling grass out from in between the stone on the pathway. Just so you know, yes we were actually having fun doing that. We raced each other and pulled harder and laughed. Nick noticed the fun we were having (I'm not kidding here...) and wanted to join in. Can anyone say Tom Sawyer here? Who needs a white washed fence when grass pulling will serve the same duty? Sometimes I feel so smart. I'm really not. This was a total accident, but I'll take credit just the same, ok?
I eventually started pulling less and less grass as I was still keeping an eye on my 2 two-year-olds too and so Lia took over as director of the grass pulling adventure. While she pulled, she showed Nick how to work effectively and encouraged the whole time! I was so blessed to hear her speak to him. "Good job, Nick!", "You are so good at this!", "What a great worker you are!", "I'm so glad you're helping me, you are amazing!"
Uh huh. Amazing. She told him he was good. She told him he was amazing. He in turn understood and soaked it all up and reused it.
So here is where my thoughts went with this. Do our words that we choose to say and our thoughts we choose to think and the people we spend time with and their words said between us, does this soak into us and make up our perspective on everything and anything?
What am I hearing? What am I saying? What am I reading?
Psalm 126:2 Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them."
Amen to that!
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