Turn and Become like...Toddlers?

“Mama!” Our toddler said, staring up at me with his big brown eyes. He waved his right hand at me while his left rested on my leg. He wanted me to pick him up.

“I’m sorry, my love,” I said, stroking his hair, “Mama can’t pick you up right now. Mama is going to go shower.”

A second passed as he took in what I said. He darted away a few steps, then pivoted sharply to look back at me, little face full of anguish.

“WAAAAAAAH!” He cried, clearly upset that he was not about to be lifted up into my arms. 

My husband tried to console him. “It’s okay, bubba. She’ll be really quick.” The crying persisted. I stepped into the shower while our son continued expressing his grief. 

Moments after getting my hair wet, the bottom corner of the shower curtain ripped open. I was greeted by a pink little face and tear-filled eyes.

“WAAAAAAAH!” Yelled our little one into the shower, cries reverberating, still wanting to be close to me even though he was finding my job performance to be unsatisfactory. 

“This isn’t a very relaxing shower,” I grumbled. My poor husband had taken my job of bathing with the toddler this night in hopes of giving me time to decompress with a shower all to myself. This wasn’t what I had imagined.

My husband chuckled at my complaint, brushing off my ungratefulness in his typical good-natured way. “C’mon buddy,” he said while scooping up our distraught boy, “Let’s try hanging out in bed and see if that helps us feel any better.” I heard the door close and our toddler’s cries fade into the distance some, but not so far that it wasn’t still abundantly obvious he was chewing us out.

Surely this is not what Jesus meant when He said “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven, (Matthew 18:3) I thought to myself. Our son’s cries persisted, despite my husband’s attempts to distract him.

But as I stood in the shower longer, I thought about it more. Maybe in some way, this is what God wants from us. 

For us to deeply desire, with our entire being, to be close to Him. 

For us to be bold in asking to be close to Him.

For us to be so desperate to be close to Him that we cry out when we feel ourselves being distanced from Him. 

For us to be completely unashamed to call for His help, to express our full range of emotions with Him. 

For us to be 100% undeterred by other distractions, so single-mindedly focused on Him that we won’t accept anything or anyone else.

In the past, when I have imagined that passage, I have always imagined a quiet, well-behaved child. Maybe a particularly angelic 6 to 8 year old. I have never in my life pictured a toddler in Jesus’s lap, in all their screaming, wobbling, high-intensity glory. But why not? Indeed, the traits my son was currently displaying, traits that all toddlers display, could be helpful to any believer hoping to grow in their faith.

Parenting through the toddler stage has been hard. I frequently find myself exhausted and confused, my patience wearing thin, wanting some space from my sweet boy. 

However, I take heart in knowing that unlike me, our God is one of infinite mercy, patience, and grace. He never tires of us. He never runs out of patience for us. And He never needs space away from us.

Yes, my boundaries are near-constantly pushed. But my toddler is doing the best he can (as we all should in our walks of faith), and his trying his best is growing my character in critical areas like patience, grace, and mercy, areas that, without this growth, I can’t fully communicate and share God’s love. Isn’t that great? Don’t we all want to challenge our brothers in sisters in Christ to be the most like Him we can? (Though I strongly recommend against taking the specific toddler approaches to doing this, like, for example, teaching patience and understanding by slapping someone  in the face with a board book.)

The pitch and volume of my little guy’s cries escalated. I hurried through the rest of my shower. I shut the water off and stepped onto the bathmat, noticing that my husband had locked the door on his way out to prevent our toddler from bursting back in. I smiled at his valiant effort.

I reached over and unlocked the door. Moments later I heard someone fiddling with the handle. The handle turned, the door opened a crack, and I was greeted by a sliver of my son’s sweet little pink face, eyes still full of tears but with an expression of cautious optimism. 

He opened the door fully and broke into a huge smile. He had stopped crying once he had heard the water turn off because he knew that meant he was about to be reunited with me. He ran to my towel and motioned for my husband to get it for him. Then, towel in hand, he toddled toward me, beaming. He was so happy to be in my presence. So proud to be able to do something for me.

I couldn’t help but smile back at my beautiful little boy, my heart reduced to a puddle. I wished I had his same level contentment when I’m in God’s presence, the same explosion of pride when I serve Him.  

Clearly, I still have a lot to learn. Good thing I have my own personal tutor.