Thursday, May 22, 2008

When Knowing is Not Enough

Ricki’s Dad is returning from overseas, arriving in a few hours. After he had been gone about a week, Ricki started bugging me “When is Daddy coming home?” So I explained. Despite repetitive descriptions and elucidations, she didn’t seem to be “getting it”. This puzzled me, as she has a very good sense of time, and knows the days of the week thoroughly. Finally I realized that the problem was probably not that she didn’t understand the answer, but she wanted a different one.
So I decided to at least give her a sense of control. I drew a timeline, and each day she moves an attached magnet to the appropriate day, one forward. Immediately she stopped asking when her father would return. Not only did she understand, but she felt a sense of participation in bringing him home.

Don’t we all feel at times that we want to ask G-d something again, because we desire a different response? It can be so frustrating when we desire a specific answer, and G-d “somehow” decides to overwrite our script of “how things should be”.

But G-d is not Rickismom. HE never gets tired of the request, and will listen to us again and again. Wishing us all happy answers, Rickismom.

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