Helping hands...

Cannon is three years old and "helping" Grandma with the dishes or laundry is high on his list of priorities. I love the idea that he wants to help and that he understands the concept of lending a hand to those who are doing chores. We have a good time washing and rinsing the dishes, tossing dirty clothes into the washer, wet clothes into the dryer, and pulling clean, dry clothes and towels out of the dryer for folding. (You can see from his picture that he's an efficient little guy--using his shirt to hold his second gun in his quest to rid the house of monsters is sheer genius.)

But his idea of helping differs greatly from mine. And while I don't mind his assistance at first, after a while I'm more than ready to go it alone. As anyone who has ever had a 3-year-old help them with household chores already knows, the pace slows down to a crawl; most things need to be rewashed/redried/refolded after all that "assistance". I hold my tongue as long as I can and then gently suggest he might want to find someone else to help.(They're always very appreciative, as you can well imagine.)

My impatience with slow-downs and obsession with perfection (and speed) are traits I continually battle to overcome. In that regard, I need to settle for less-than-perfection. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if God doesn't feel the same way about our trying to help HIM as we do when little ones try to help us. Let's face it, in God's eyes, we can't be any better at helping Him out as Cannon is at helping me. Like Cannon, our intentions may be the best, but sometimes helping just gets in the way. Just as I know more about washing dishes than my grandson does, God also knows infinitely more about running the universe than I do.
And fortunately, He also knows a lot more about ridding our world of monsters, although I'm sure He appreciates Cannon's dogged determination to help out.

Until the next time...