Packing and the Blueberry Girl

Ok we are packing and I am bushed for the night. I am going to blog, crochet, read my Bible, and go to bed. We plan to be all packed into the trailor by Sunday, then relax a couple of days and leave on Thursday. A few days in Santa Maria, and then Mexico!!!!

Now the bluberry story. It begins with a confession. I let my three year old daughter watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with me last month. A mistake. I had foolishly thought that it would be as appropriate for children as the last one, and Ruth has never been afraid of anything on TV yet. Excuses excuses.

Well, I was disturbed by the creepy Willy Wonka guy--a childlike, effeminate, pale-faced man invites children into his wonderland ranch, I mean chocolate factory. This is way too close to the Michael Jackson hearings for me to enjoy that kind of stuff, but I digress; this is about Ruth's reaction, not mine.

She was alarmed when Violet turned blue. She started to shake, and I reasurred her everything was fine. She seemed to be ok, so I didn't think anything of it. (Except nothing scarey on TV for her!) Back to today. She and her two year old sister were playing in their room, and Ruth runs in to me, "Mommy! Becca's blue!" Of course that kind of thing is enough to send me running. Sure enough there was Rebecca-blue dyed popcicle stick in her teeth, studiously trying to eat it. Her lips and cheeks were bright turquois. Ruth started to cry. I cleaned Rebecca up, took away the stick, and then proceeded to try to reassure Ruth, but she was really upset. She kept coming to me crying. I was a little out of sorts as to how to deal with this because Ruth never gets emotional. When she does, it's usually fake and obvious, but this was real.

I told her Rebecca was fine. I told her to stop being scared. Then she saw that somehow some of that blue dye had gotten on her hands. She freaked. "I BLUE MOMMY! I BLUE!" I picked her up, washed her hands and set her on her feet. Then I quietly told her to look at me. It took a while, but finally she did. I took her chin in my hand to reinforce the eye contact and said slowly, "Mommy will NOT let Ruth turn into a blueberry. Mommy will NOT let Rebecca turn into a blueberry. Do you understand?"

She looked right into my eyes, then said, "OK!", jumped down, and ran into her room, completely fine!

That just made me think of when Jesus said we need to have childlike faith in God to come to Him. When we are terrified and don't understand what's going on, God does, and He tells us, "Be still, and know that I am God!" When we sit still to listen, there He is with a promise like, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." We can try to figure it out on our own-and we can't, or we can just trust Him like Ruth trusted me.

The other thing it made me think was, "Wow! What a responsibility to have someone trust you like that!" Yeeks. I wish I was more like MY heavenly Father.