Enjoying the leisurely stroll

“Yemulade.”

“L-l-lemonade.”

“Lemonade! Lemonade! Lemonade!”

My three year old recently graduated from saying “yemulade” to being able to say “lemonade.” It was really cute to see him bouncing up and down saying it over and over, so proud of himself for getting it right.

At about the same time, his six year old brother took off on his bike without training wheels and crossed the monkey bars without help–both in the same week. In a way, those are really small deals. But to my kids, those accomplishments matter. And that makes them important. Paying attention and celebrating those moments is where a relationship is built.

I have a tendency to live from one big event to the next—grand birthday celebrations, elaborate holidays, fun vacations, special events. But there’s a lot of life that takes place on all those days in-between, and I want to pay attention and catch the small stuff.

My spiritual life can be the same way. It’s easy to live from Sunday to Sunday, from Christmas to Easter and miss the fact that God is right there in all the moments in between. I don’t want to miss those moments with God any more than I want to miss the small things with my kids.

Sometimes those moments are answers to prayers so small I almost don’t remember praying them–like when we moved to Portland and lived in such a dark home that I needed the lights on all day, year ’round. I completely forgot expressing my heart to live in a house “with as many windows as the walls will hold.” And yet, 3 years later, we moved into just such a home. Sometimes those ‘God-moments’ are as simple as a rainbow that ties a ribbon around a message He’s spoken just to me.

I’m grateful that my life has still, flat spaces in it. It can be exhausting always climbing one spiritual mountain only to reach the crest and be sent tumbling headlong down the other side. And while God is there supporting us from behind on the climbs or ready to catch us before we crash on the decent, He also walks along beside us on the flat stretches. It’s those leisurely strolls that create the foundation for the mountaineering moments of faith.

Have you noticed Him walking beside you lately?

The LORD is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake. Psalm 23:1-3

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