Faith

I had been noticing lately how fidgety Josie gets when I am reading her stories at night. And I wondered, is this how she acts in school while her teachers are reading to the class. As I read, she has to have another book in her hands at all times. She tries to read it simultaneously. She takes off her baby dolls clothes, she sticks her toy snake in my face and says "hissss" and rolls around the bed until I tell her to stop.

I decided I needed to make this my new project. Getting Josie to sit still. Tried asking nicely. That didn't work for her. Tried yelling. That didn't work for me. Tried walking out of the room without reading. That didn't work for either of us.

Maybe, I thought, if I actually read the words of the book with an animated voice and actually read the words on the page instead of making up a few words to describe each picture so I can be done as quickly as possible, she might sit still.

And amazingly, it worked. I sat there and read the words and she was hooked.

Today she picked the children's bible book that had a few of the important stories with big words and bright pictures. About 1/2 through the story of the Jesus healing the blind man, she rips the book out of my hand.

"Let me see that." she said and turned to the previous page. "Let me see the mud."

"The mud?" I asked since clearly I hadn't been paying very much attention to the words I was reading.

"The mud on his eyes," she pointed to the picture. "Why did Jesus do that?"

"Oh, because he can't see and its making him feel better."

"The mud is making him feel better?" She asked with the eyes of a disbelieving adolescent.

"Yes." I said.

"Why?" She said.

"I don't know." I said.

She glanced down at the picture for a long time. I couldn't believe my daughter was already having a crisis of faith. And I couldn't believe that tomorrow I was going to have to pay extra attention to Josie at the park to make sure she wasn't putting mud on other children's eyes.

"Let me just finish the book," I said and went back to making up my own words to match the pictures that wouldn't evoke another crisis of faith or encourage her to place anything else anywhere else on the human body. Maybe fidgeting during story time wasn't such a big deal, definitely better than discussing the healing power of Jesus Christ with a 3 year old.