A Sweet Moment

I have a lot of updating to do but we are having such a good time with fun plans each day while we enjoy the summer so I just haven't gotten around to updating. I'll do my best to have a post with some recaps over the past few months because there have been some neat things that have happened and I'll explain one big thing that happened for Grant at the end of April that was very special.

One big event that I haven't posted yet because I wanted to take the time to tell the story and the sweet details but on April 29th, Grant on his own accord during his quiet room play time decided to ask Jesus to come into his heart. He did it on his own and when we were praying at bedtime that night, he told me about it. I will post more about the details of how this all came about but it was very sweet and just melted our heart as we listened to him explain why he wanted to do this and what he understood about the free gift that Jesus offered him.

Tonight when it was time to pray at bedtime, he asked me if I would leave his room because he wanted to tell God something but he didn't want me to hear. He didn't say it in an ugly way but I could tell he had something on his mind. I walked out of his room and heard him say, "Dear God, thank you for this day. Thank you for my toys. Clean my yucky"(and what I thought he said was arm). When he told me he was finished, I came back in and I asked if everything was okay because there has not been a time yet where he hasn't been able to talk or share something with me. He told me exactly what he prayed for and it wasn't for a yucky arm but a "yucky heart." At first, I tried to tell him his heart wasn't yucky and I asked him where he heard this because it is important to us that our kids know and feel confident in our unconditional love for them and understand that while they may do bad things at times it doesn't make them a bad person. I felt so bad for him that he believed that about his heart and that he was embarrassed to say that in front of me.

Then, I realized really all of our hearts are "yucky" and they need to be cleaned each day and while God wants to free and restore us from our sin and free us from feelings of guilt or embarrassment, I don't think we feel "embarrassed" enough about our sin. So often we just blatantly sin and feel no remorse or have an attitude of "it's my life and I'll live it the way I want to." It is when we have this same kind of child-like faith that we get embarrassed about our sin to the point that we just want to be alone with God and get it right and then move on. It just came naturally for Grant to want to be alone to tell God about what he was feeling. I didn't teach him this. I have just told him that when he has done something he should not do, he needs to tell God about it and ask God for help and He will be there to help him with whatever he needs. I just thought it was neat seeing the innocence and purity of a child's heart and it made me think how sad that we as adults, get so off-course and wrestle with God over our sin and go against what is so instinctual for a child to get alone with God and ask for help. There is no pride. Just a vulnerable heart before God!

As we continued to talk, I asked him why his heart was "yucky" and he told me because he does bad things. His biggest struggle right now is first time obedience and he was praying for God to help him but I explained that we all do bad things and that when we ask God to clean our hearts just like he did, then God makes it clean each day and we can forget about it and ask God to help us do better next time. He was cute because he asked, "what does a yucky heart look like?" Then, he said...there are a lot of different ways God can clean something. He can use a wipe, or water so how does He do it? I love these kind of questions. His curiosity and questions are what led us to have a lot of spiritual conversations which got to be more frequent back in February and then on his very own, he took all the pieces of the puzzle from our conversations and came to his own conclusion that he was ready to ask Jesus in his heart. While I don't know if he will consider this his salvation experience, he seemed very clear on what it meant so we celebrated. Such sweet moments and these will be ingrained in my mind and heart forever! I love the heart and mind of children. So often they get it so much more than we do and we need to be open and humble enough to learn from them too!