My oldest celebrated her 6th birthday. As I’m sure we all remember, the most important thing about birthdays? The people who love you? No… The gift of life to love and be loved? No…
It’s the presents.
In our last podcast we talked about how we have to hate our lives in this world; or in other words, we must hate anything that takes our eyes away from God. I caught a couple of things in my oldest leading up to her birthday that caught me off guard. My youngest, who is incapable of keeping a secret, let slip what she got her sister. My oldest began to dictate what her expectations of the gift were and how she would be disappointed if it didn’t meet her requirements.
I had been struggling how to approach this and we hit it just right in our discussion. AJ used the term “view through” as we discussed what gifts and heroes should be. That sparked perfect imagery for me. Gifts should be a lens through which we are able to see God. I literally pictured a box wrapped with a bow. In the middle is a piece of rose colored glass. I pick up the box and look through the glass and see Christ.
I decided to try my hand and talk to my girl. The night before her birthday I started off a conversation with the question: what does a gift represent? She knew I was baiting her in, so she jumped right in with “love.” That made the discussion quite a bit easier. We went through it all and she seemed to really grasp the idea.
The next day when she opened her presents, she was very appreciative. She told everyone she loved them and we had the best day. She approached the whole day with appreciation. I’m not going to say it was perfect, because we had to have the same discussion that night because she began to focus on the future presents coming over the weekend.
I am a true believer in this now. I am also a true believer in consistency!
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