Learning to Accept Love Again

Lately, I've been volunteering at a daycare in my free time, and the experience has been a continual blessing and source of revelation to me. When God says we must have faith like a child, we often think we know what it means or remember what our childhood is like, but we quickly forget. Spending time with these kids has been refreshing, reminding me of what life should look like.

Just the other day, one of the four-year-old girls cut a "picture" for me out of blue construction paper and taped the pieces of paper together, carefully assembling what she called a house. After she was finished and was preparing to leave with her mom, she told me that now I needed to make her a picture. So once she left, I sat down and cut out a simple heart, writing her name on the front and signing mine on the back. I left it in her classroom cubby for her to find the next day.

The next day at the daycare, she greeted me and then thanked me for the heart. What surprised me was when she then asked what it had said. I suppose I had assumed she'd already asked her teacher when she found it, and therefore knew it was from me. But no. She didn't even know that it was my name written on the back! She already knew it was from me...sure, probably because she couldn't think of anyone else who would leave her a heart, but also because she expected me to give when she asked me to.

It got me thinking in a way that filled me with joy and sadness at the same time. I realized how confident she had been in me--she never once doubted that I was going to return her act of friendship, never thought I'd let her down. She expected something good and wasn't surprised when she received it, just happy and thankful. It opened my eyes to how little we as adults (or at least how little I) expect from others or even from God.

After years of finding that others often fail to give back to us and only take, after countless disappointments, after a long list of broken promises and hurts from other people, how easy it is to distrust others. How hard it becomes to even accept love, gifts, and affection. We no longer expect it. In fact, we expect the opposite. We are suspicious of everyone, even of those who offer us acts of kindness or tell us they care. "What do they want?" "When will they change their minds about me?" The doubts plague us. We wonder if we even deserve love.

Worse still, we fail to anticipate love and blessings from God. Will He let us down like everyone else has? Do we really deserve anything good?

O to be like a child again and accept love, to be confident that the ones we love will love us back. To expect others to be dependable and to follow through on their words, to trust them to not let you down or hurt you. Maybe we can't place that kind of confidence in fickle, selfish, ever-changing people anymore (our scarred hearts have learned better over the years), but we can and should learn to place that type of faith in God again. He wants us to accept His love without doubt of its strength and constancy. He wants us to expect His blessings.

For some reason, this thought astounds me. It's not greedy to expect to be blessed in the simple way a boy expects his mother to welcome him to sit on her lap, or a girl anticipates her father's hug and kiss when he returns home from work. So why shouldn't I expect good things from my Father? Wouldn't He be overjoyed to see me waiting in eager anticipation for the next gift or act of love He extends in my direction?

What if I came to God like this little girl did, offering Him whatever love-gifts from my heart I have to give, and fully expecting Him to reciprocate with blessings and love for me?