Fresh Eyes

I went out to dinner tonight with Nik.  Good old Texas Roadhouse, one of those places that just...is.  Neither particularly good nor particularly bad; the belly is filled with a minimum of fuss one way or the other.  Tonight was a little different, though.  Dinner tonight held an element of...Excitement! Danger! Adventure!  "Roadhouse?", you say?  "Adventure?"

Ah, indeed yes.  Tonight, we had a little man with us, and when you're seven months old, dinner is a wondrous excursion down all sorts of new and tremendously exciting paths.  One must navigate pitfalls (WATCH THAT PLATE!), thoroughly investigate whatever novelties one finds (this soft, squishy bread thing tastes good!), and make all sorts of discoveries, both good (ooey, gooey marshmallows) and....interesting! (Whooeeeyyy! This yellow thing is SOUR!!)


















It's funny, how something as routine as another plate of chicken critters takes on such sparkle when a little person is around.  We slow down...look around..."I wonder what he'll do with this ketchup bottle?"  "Here, give him the waxed paper from the dinner roll basket..."  "Can he have some Coke?"

 Suddenly, we grown-ups are sucked into the game.  Mealtime changes from a mere refueling session, rushed through en route to the next task on the checklist, to something bigger, and if you ask me, altogether better.  It seems like, somewhere in between dipping our fingers in honey mustard and rescuing dropped forks and wiping smashed sweet potatoes off of little noses, we start to see things with new eyes.  We hear a little better, gain some perspective.  Suddenly, all those big things we thought were so important are cut down to size.You start to understand why the Lord loved little children so much, and why he told us, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."













I want to live that way, every day.  Love every moment.  Savor every experience for the great adventure that it is.  Be grateful for eyes that see and ears that hear and a chance to make it all count.  Live Logan-style.