Eating Rocks

Last night was great. It started with Jamie, Leah and I going down to the beach to enjoy what is probably one of the last nice days of summer/fall. I have this fear that the weather is just going to take a turn to frigid soon. Maybe I should buy a Farmer's Almanac...

Anyway, Leah has a weird (yet normal) aversion with sticking everything in her mouth. I mean, it's borderline ridiculous. Even when we go grocery shopping I have to have my hands ready like a hockey goalie to stop her constant pecking at the cart handle. Gross.

But back to the story. As we were sitting on the beach, Leah decided that every stone she could wrap her fingers around looked like food. She literally picked up every stone she could. And being the good dad that I am, I would take it from her and fling it behind me.

After a minute or so of this de-rocking on the beach, I realized I could be proactive and actually remove the rocks before she got to them. As kind as I thought this was, she decided to go above and beyond. She started crawling.

And so we crawled together. We meandered the beach and with each half-crawl, she would grab a rock, lift it to her mouth, and then I would take it from her.

It was at this moment that it God spoke to me. In so many areas of my life I try to eat rocks. Even after I realize they are inedible, dangerous and just plain gross, I do my best to eat rocks. When I became aware of God's presence in my life, I was able to more clearly see the rocks and in some cases even feel God take them away from me.

So what do I do? I crawl my way to more rocks. More sin. It's sickening, annoying and it's my human nature. I am really blown away when God uses fatherhood to teach me lessons like this. It happens pretty regularly, but this one really stuck out to me.