The Neverending Birthday Season- Part 1

This past week has been one continuous birthday celebration after another. Extended family. Our family. Charis's friends. Charis actually got confused as to the exact birth date...being that we just never stopped partying. ;)

Uncle Jonas and the girls...off walking on our Sunday picnic to the mountain.
We've been "pruning" some of our massive trees and are yet to dispose of the mess. So Charis visited one of our large debris piles, pulled out a limb, "planted" it...and dubbed it the birthday tree. Decorating it with everything they could get their hands on. I smell a child-established tradition in the making. ??

But before the family party began, we had (part of) Jet's family all to ourselves. The girls had just sang a song for them...and Grandmama was eloquently talking about worship. how God created us to worship. how beautiful their act of worship was. She was utilizing the moment...and was going deep.

And then it happened. Charis is sitting there. Unmoving. Intently staring into space. Completely silent. To which you assume, ahhh...she's really listening. You can tell she's just pondering all these things in her heart. How completely adorable.

But then she opened her mouth. "Grandmama...?"

"Yes, Charis?" We all wait. Fully expecting that this newly-turned 5 year old (who does tend to think on the deep side of things) would have some profound, yet child-like thing to say on worship.

She takes a deep breath and goes on, "This is my middle finger." She displays it for all to see.

Huh. didn't see that one coming.

I look at my mother-in-law, smiling. Knowing ALL too well how many times MY attempts to "train them up in the way they are to go" have ended in kid-comments like this one. Like the time my heartfelt talk about the blessing she was in my life was interrupted with "Did you know that when you eat food, it comes out of your hinney as poop?"

Um. Yeah. I think I knew that. Did you happen to catch what I was saying by any chance? ;)

So following my daughters poignant display of her middle finger, my teenage brother-in-law is in the background laughing hard and proclaiming, "Man, I'm going to have to remember that one! 'THIS is my MIDDLE finger'..........." I have to admit, we were all laughing hard.

And just like that, our lovely little moment faded into the background. *laughing* It's times like these that I am intimately aware that God has a crazy sense of humor and just wants us to lighten up a bit.