Have you ever noticed how some children are louder than others? It isn’t that they are deaf or think you are deaf they just speak louder than other children. I do not know if it is because they are all so filled with excitement that everything is at least three or four clicks above normal volume, they are just louder. My youngest daughter should have gone into stage acting. She has excellent timing, now. She has a great sense of comedic talent, now. She understands how people tick, now. She is highly sensitive to people’s emotions, now. She has always had a clear, fill the back row of any theater, type voice.
I used to blame it on her school and the other children, thinking that she was just needing that volume to be heard over the den of the hall or class. We would enjoy her stories but sometimes ask her to lower her voice. Unfortunately there was one time that if I had asked her to lower her voice it was already too late.
You know how children have a wonderful sense of wonder…they just wonder so many things and then find the word, “why?” This child didn’t abuse me or the word “why” with too many questions. But when she thought, she thought big questions. It was one of those questions that just about got me into hot water…but only if I answered the question in the wrong way. It wasn’t that I would answer wrongly if I had been given time to think about an appropriate way to answer it. It was the loudness, the timing, the place. Have you ever noticed that when the question, “why” comes up there are times you just do not know the real correct fast answer?
One of those times occurred all in one very important question and moment.
My daughter and I were walking down the mall one day. Now that I think of it the acoustics of a mall hall can really add to the tenor of this story… We were chatting and looking in the windows at the mall. There were several people here and there. People were coming, going, passing each other. They were in front of us and behind us.
My daughter started her important question with the usual “why” but this time it just about stopped me in my tracks as it significantly slowed the lady passing us down to a near crawl.
In her innocent loud three year old voice I could hear her ask, “Mom, why are there black people?”
She didn’t realize at that age that some people like to be called African Americans and because of how she was raised there wasn’t a strong sense of difference between any peoples brought forth over another. People are and were people in our lives, sometimes a gender clarification of this girl or that boy but not much else. The woman that had been passing us pretty quickly and then slowed her pace to a crawl just happened to be an African American. At that moment it felt like everyone in the mall was waiting for my answer and I felt like my brain had gone flat line.
As a big turn to God person I really turned to Him then. I thought, “Oh, Father! Please give me an answer that will give everyone here the answer they need to hear!”
That was about all I could send forth. I had a three year old and an adult. As quickly as the question and my prayer were, what I said to this young person was this: “You know how we have lots of different colored flowers in our back yard?”
She nodded.
“Well God loves all the different colors that He created in His people.”
She smiled and nodded again as if I had answered her in a way her little three year old self could understand. The lady smiled and picked back up her brisk walk. I felt relief that I was just a simple witness to a higher truth. May I say the word “relief” again? I felt relief.
I’m not sure if when she had that “I’m thinking” face on I would rush her to the car after that. But all I know is that through the years I have asked many times,
“Why?! Why do I always get the hard questions?”
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