Morning Light

I came around the corner to find Peanut sitting at the kitchen table eating her breakfast with her eyes pinched shut. “Your baby is missing, Mama.” She announced. She was so sure of the total darkness registering in her brain, despite the sunlight filling the window, backlighting her bedhead and transforming the plastic gaudy flower tablecloth into a sheet of glowing white. Her face was scrunched so that the whole of it seems to be folding into itself at the eye sockets, pulling her mouth into a happy grimace showing her baby teeth.

Kind of like this:

This hasn’t been my best parenting week. There are a few choice moments of me responding very, very, very badly to the tiresome quirks of the oldest I would rather forget forever. Like Peanut, I would like to scrunch my face and announce my disappearance. Truthfully.

This morning a timely word came with all the promise of a little silver box with silky matching ribbon. It came by way of A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer which I picked up earlier this week at the local used books store. This morning, Mr. Bonhoeffer pointed me towards Proverbs 4:18: “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter till full day.” I whispered a little thanks for the reminder that my best days, my closest likeness to the character of Christ, are yet to come. The moments when I most closely resemble the love, patience, and wisdom of God are not lost somewhere in my past. I haven’t missed it. I haven’t squandered all of himself that he longs to give. He calls me to new mercies every morning, to a discipline of prayer, a closeness to his Word. And like the morning, my life holds promise for more light, more warmth, more movement toward the heart of God.