When Your Job is Taking Care of Kids
“Sydney! I woke up this morning!”
I turned around from the stove, where I was scurrying between heating up milk for the one-year-old, emptying the dishwasher, cleaning up the spilled milk from the counter, getting said one year old out from where he was emptying out the bottles in the pantry, and waiting for him to stop screaming before I forced myself to smile and say with animation:
“Yes, you did! Would you like some breakfast?”
She was the sweet girl I nannied – four years old, blonde hair, blue eyes – one of those little girls that can look good in clothes so unmatched it would send Emilia Clarke from Me Before You leaping into bumble-bee legging ecstacies. She was clearly excited, and I tried my best to match her happiness as I wrestled the writhing baby into his highchair.
“Would you like breakfast?” I asked again, trying to recapture her attention from the cheerios her brother was gleefully tossing onto the floor.
“Yes! I woke up this morning!”
“Awesome!” I poured some chocolate milk and handed it to her, while I shook up the baby’s bottle. “What would you like for breakfast?”
“Sydney! I woke up this morning!”
“Yep!” My smile was still there, but my replies were getting shorter. “Now its time for breakfast. Would you like some cereal?”
“No. That’s lunch food.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that….okay. Would you like some pancakes?”
“No. That’s for snacks.”
“Okay….you liked them for breakfast yesterday. Are you sure?”
“Daddy said you have to give me a treat for breakfast.”
“No, he wants you to have a real breakfast. Maybe we can have a treat later after your nap.”
“When I wake up?”
“Yes, when you wake up. Now, what would you like for breakfast?”
“I want cereal.”
“Cereal?”
“Yes, I need cereal right now.”
“Okay.” I went to the pantry and grabbed the box of Cheerios.
As I walked back to the fridge to get the milk I had just put away, I could the ear-piercing shriek of excitement ringing over the hard-wood floors.
“Sydney! I woke up this morning!”
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I wrote that two months ago, during nap-time in the middle of my nanny work day. Though I wasn’t necessarily smiling when it happened, I was smiling when I wrote it down. Just witnessing the excitement with which a child approaches life is breathtaking, convicting, and exhausting.
Kids get excited about everything. They go giddy when their milk is filled up to the top of the glass, are completely arrested by the thirty-fourth duck they’ve seen across the street, shriek with excitement over the popcorn kernel shaped like a camel.
This passion for life is childlike. It is innocent, it is instinctive, it is unrefined, unseasoned by the growth of knowledge and experience.
But it is also precious. And as we mature, and the hot blades with which we once sliced through existence go through a little tempering, we gain something and lose something all at once.
One of the most convicting times for me in watching this little girl’s excitement was when we sat down to read the Bible and pray in the morning.
I would say, “It’s Bible time!” and she would flash her beautiful smile, run over to her bean bag chair, slide it across the living room, sit down and point to the hardwood floor at her side with the imperative, “Sit here.” (She is an oldest daughter…what can I say?)
I would take my seat next to her, pull the books from my backpack, and begin to read. We were going through The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones and she would often sit at the edge of her seat, hunched over the vibrant pictures, asking questions about the stories, and going off in childlike ecstacies over the escapades recorded in Scripture.
After that we’d read a few Bible verses, and then pray together, thanking God for each other, asking Him to protect us and Daddy and Mommy throughout the day, and always ending it with, “help us to have fun today, and to love you, trust you, and obey you.”
Simple. Childlike faith.
Children understand more than we give them credit for. They retain more than we think they do. Often times they see more clearly than we do, even in the places we actually know better.
Along with spilled cheerios, and piercing screams of excitement, and tantrums over inanimate objects, are also the lessons from life that can only be learned through coloring books, and dance parties, and the ball you have to chase again, and again, and again. Lessons adults have forgotten.
The stress and frenzy and exhaustion that comes with caring for kids comes coupled with a fresh reminder that all days are new. That every day is a gift. And that as slow as they may seem to pass, one day, looking back, it will be but a flash of color within a lifetime.
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I wish that when I dragged myself out of bed in the morning it was to feel my heart leaping with excitement. I woke up this morning. Another day. Another gift. Who knows what God has planned for me today, as His mercies renew with the sunrise.
When I nannied those two little kids, I was reminded, again and again, and again (and often in a single morning) that the fact that “you woke up this morning” should always be punctuated with an exclamation point.
And one day, those kids will wake up older, and become more like me, on the mornings that I would rather slam my hand down on the alarm clock, cling to my last few minutes of sleep, and then lie there wondering if I really need a job to make money.
The tempering will come. The vigor will be seasoned. The passion will be tested and strained. The excitement over life’s joys will fade with familiarity.
And with all that, will be found the growth and maturity and the rich blessings God has for a future that can only be gained through living forward.
With all that, they will gain, and lose, and gain again, and lose again, on and on until the story is finished. Forever and endlessly chasing the ball. Like we do.
But through it all, God has a single goal, a single purpose. A pure, passionate, holy desire: To make us like a child again.
Best of all, He’s made a promise:
That He will.
Soli Deo Gloria,
~