Thought of the Day 10.27.09

My son Ethan loves to help me cook. Naturally, this does very little to reduce the time it takes me to make a meal. He likes to do the measuring, which makes me anxious. He likes to do the pouring, which makes me anxious. And he likes to do all the mixing, which makes me anxious. But he loves to be a part of it, so this is what parenting means.

The one thing he does to distress me most is touch everything. Seriously, everything. Just as infants encounter the world by putting everything in their mouths, apparently three-year-olds think that if they haven’t fondled it, it isn’t real. So I’m constantly telling him not to touch things to avoid spills, a historically justified concern.

Well, this weekend, he did spill something just after I had admonished him not to touch it, and I lost my temper, which surely terrified him. But even this terror couldn’t deter him since, moments later, he was right back to touching everything again.

Now, if stopping a very simple behavior is so clearly impossible for my son despite numerous warnings, a desire to please his daddy, and the fear of his father’s anger, why do we think we are capable of overcoming our sins by our own abilities?