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Saturday, January 17, 2015

Open your mouth wide and I will fill it

We are in the air en route to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. The Germans are so kind yet officious.

Ana has eaten a bit of baby food (2/3 of a jar, 80kcal) and some fruit goop and Humana Folgemilch (probaby 30-40kcal). We have been up since 4am after a late night of two big diapers and what I thinl was attention-seeking crying.

But I am thinking about how Ana eats. She makes hungry tooth and tongue noises to tell you (she is still making them after our recent snack - sorry girl, there are some realities of air travel to contend with - only one Squish Delish pouch on a short haul). And she loves to eat. She has affectionate smiles for Papa and Mama, but she has this great big dopamine-dump smile while eating. She likes to let food sit in her mouth and on her lips. I believe she would be thrilled to wallow in a tub of sweet goopy food.  There are reasons for this, to be sure. Being deliberately kept near starvation for ten years and then for two more years just fed orphanage food on the orphanage schedule (in July I was told I was "spoiling her" by taking so much time over lunch - forty minutes, perhaps?) is bound to warp your view of food. And as a grown man who is mostly functional (check with Mama to be sure) it is easy to look at that simple food idolatry and be somewhat repulsed. I mean, eww. It's baby food smeared all over, girl, nothing to bliss out over.

But then I thought of that verse: "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it". God delights in giving simple blessings to his children, presenting the very image of a father feeding his small children and telling them to "open up!" (or as Ana knows, zoom-zoom-zoom-knock-knock).

And then what are we to do? What pleases our Father?

We swallow. We thank God for his blessings and then use them as he wants us to use them. If we bliss out over the blessings, if we focus on them and not the God who gives them to be used, we make an idol. And God will frown and wipe that idol out and encourage us again to take what he gives the way he gives it and be thankful.

And how gross must I look when I smear job or house or hobbies or even family and church work all over my face and grin. Let us use the gift and thank the Giver.

In Christ from 10km up,
Papa and Ana

1 comment:

  1. at least if she likes eating it will be one less battle... I hope !

    The sun is shining here next to Paris, I hope you have a lovely flight up in a sunny sky!

    ReplyDelete

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