Reading Scripture

Advent season is here. Each year of our marriage, my wife has lit a candle each advent night and led us through scripture readings about Christ’s coming. This year, my daughter is reading scripture.

I’ve received my Christmas present early. She reads prophecies from Isaiah and Jeremiah with poise and skill. My wife asks her if she has questions, and she does. They’re excellent. Is the “king” in the prophecy Jesus? Why is God mad at the people’s sacrifices? Why are the letters of “LORD” capitalized?

I had been thinking about nightly devotions. Once again, my wife took the lead. My daughter followed.

Negotiating Feelings

My daughter came home from school feeling sad. She had gotten herself into some personal drama, and though things had turned out okay, she was shaken.

She was playing with a toy. A girl (Girl 1) in her class asked for it. When my daughter did not give the toy up promptly, Girl 1 called my daughter mean. This taunt made my daughter even less inclined to give the toy up.

Then another girl (Girl 2) asked for the toy. My daughter feared Girl 2’s wrath. She gave up the toy.  Gril 1 saw that Girl 2 had the toy, and they began to fight. My daughter saw the conflict as her fault.

Fortunately, Girl 1 and Girl 2 figure out how to share the toy.

“If you had to do it all over again,” I asked my daughter, “what would you do?”

“Give Girl 1 the toy!” she said quickly.

She’s learning.

Play Practice

My daughter is starring as the angel in our church play. “Starring” is misleading. The play only has four actresses. My daughter is the youngest of the four and has the fewest lines. Still, we want her to do well, so I practiced with her this afternoon.

We read through the entire play, with me playing every part but hers. I wanted to see how my daughter would perform the lines with direction. After the run-through, we practiced just her lines. I would say the line, and she would repeat after me.

I had two directions. Speak slowly and speak expressively. She was a champ. If she can pull off something close to what she did this afternoon, she’ll steal the show. “Christ is born!”

Post-Thanksgiving Concert

My daughter took the opportunity this afternoon to put on a concert. The prelim was much more ambitious than the show itself. It included:

  • Credit cards for my wife and me to use at the event
  • Elaborate parking instructions (“in case some people don’t want to walk,” she told me)
  • Specific timetable (“there’s going to be a lot of people, so you want to get there early!”)
  • A rapt audience of stuffed animals set up inside the bathroom (the concert venue)
  • Two songs, each dedicated to animals: “I’m so cute” (about a cat) and “Shake your tail” (about a unicorn)

She’s already an impresario.

Thanksgiving Catch-Up

Here are three notes from the past three school-free days.

  1. My daughter made a small “Bedtime Prayers” book for her cousins. It showed off her art skills, her care for her cousins, and her love for Jesus. She devised this project on her own.
  2. With the TV or Spotify on blast, my daughter has started honing her critical chops. “Are these people like bad rock stars?” she quipped upon seeing the 175th group of Broadway singers during the Macy’s Day parade. “It’s the happiest time of the year!” said a Spotify ad for some unremarkable product. “No, it’s not!” she shot back. Alas, her inner critic can lead to friendly fire. When my wife made some less than stellar Rice Krispy treats, my daughter said matter-of-factly, “They taste like dirt.”
  3. We only went to one store on Black Friday today: Barnes & Noble. I bought my daughter what she didn’t know she always wanted: a book with nothing but cat jokes. I may have made a colossal mistake.

Sharing Prayers

After dinner, I typically work on my prayer calendar. I have a list of people I pray for each day, and I send them texts or emails with what I prayed for them. My daughter can’t see that this is what I’m doing, however. She only sees me typing away on my laptop.

This evening, I invited her to see what I was doing. I showed her the messages I had sent to a co-worker (Jin) and mentor (Bill). She immediately wanted to participate.

She dictated the following email to her grandmother.

Jesus Loves You with all his heart. Don’t feel sad and lonely because he is always with you, and he’ll take care of you all day and all night, and when you choose to pray, he’ll listen very closely.
Love,
Cat

It’s an early Thanksgiving present!

My takeaway: share more of my life with her. Give her a chance to participate if she wants.

My Daughter, the Actress

Our daughter is a drama queen.

At school today, she learned about the pilgrims. She came home and decided to be a pilgrim. Her performance involved an apron, a bonnet (which she approximated by putting her underwear on her head), and an “old-timey” bed.

She is practicing for the Christmas play too. Because our youth group is four people, she gets to say the lines of all three angels. It is a trip to see her holding her script, reading her lines with the ease of a girl twice her age.

Now, if we could just cut down on the diva-esque tantrums, we would have something going.

Short Memory

Tonight, my daughter demonstrated the benefits of a short memory.

One hour after a tantrum of epic proportions, she talked to my wife and me about her day as though nothing had happened. “You know,” she said confidentially, “I’m not that crazy about tomato sauce.” We did know. “Oh boy,” she said, rolling her eyes after another school day revelation as if to say, “Can you believe it?” The thing I can’t believe is that she’s acting like she wasn’t acting like a crazy person sixty minutes ago.

She will be furious with me, and thirty minutes later, she will hug me and tell me she loves me.

I want her to stop being so volatile, especially in how she interacts with my wife.

But I also want to be more like her in her ability to ask forgiveness and move on.

I wonder if her short memory is part of what Christ meant when he said that we must have faith like a child to enter God’s kingdom.

Storytelling

Tonight, my daughter attended her first middle school girl’s basketball game.

When she got home, she reimagined what she had seen as a game between cats and dogs. She drew a picture first, then wrote the story.

I was proud of her for writing it down without asking for our help. You can tell. The spelling is all over the place.

When she read it to me, I told how proud I was of her making some art out of her experience.

Collage

Yesterday, my daughter showed me something she made at school: a collage of photos featuring her and two friends. The project featured an audio file where my daughter described the idea behind the project. She called it “You and Me” (she didn’t know how to spell “Friendship Collage”). I was impressed.

“Did everyone make one?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Just me.” A trendsetter!

Even cooler? Her teacher left a comment: “I love it!”

I concurred.