Unexpected Blessing

Don't you just love it when you absolutely dread something, and God just smooths the way unexpectedly and the whole ordeal ends up being nothing more than a small blip?

Here we are at Day 5 of Spencer's week without his cloth, and he has surprised me. Sometimes I'd almost put money on the kids knowing my expectations and doing the exact opposite just to make a liar out of me.

Other than the BIG meltdown last Wednesday night, and the whine session the following day (certainly due partly to his lack of sleep), Spencer has hardly noticed his missing cloths.

That Thursday morning, he was pretty mad not to get his cloth. I sat him down and told him, "Don't you remember how hard last night was?" Oh yes, he remembered. I asked him why he'd want to do that again, because if he grabbed hold of his cloth even one more time, we'd have to do that "giving it up" thing all over again. The tension on his face just melted off, and we went to the kitchen for a game of Yahtzee. On Friday, he was getting sleepy around mid afternoon. He looked at me with a frustrated expression and said, "I can't find my cloth." I said, "Oh, you're done with that, remember?" And he smiled and said, "Oh, yeah. I just forgot for a minute."

End of story.

Well, almost. He stood on the kitchen chair yesterday and stretched as far as he could reach and said that he felt "this big" now that he doesn't need his cloth anymore. And then he said, "I'm almost a grown-up now."

How is our most stubborn child easier to break of this than our most easily re-directed child? It's just a God thing. I'm convinced of it.

You see, Miss Allison is watching this whole thing unfold. And her having Spencer's example to follow is going to be so much better for us all than if she remembered and chose to go the route of Clay.