What My 5 Year Old Asks Me Every Morning

“Is it a wash-sumfin day?”

As she’s rounded the corner on age 5, my youngest’s pronunciation of the question has become slightly clearer, but for a while I might’ve had to translate for you. At the start of many-a-morning, I have two kids who ask:

“Is it a school day?”

And a third that asks, “Is it a wash-sumfin day?”

Translation: “Is it a watch-something day?” or, better put, “Am I allowed screen time today, and if so, how soon can I get it?”

I have this crazy privilege/responsibility: managing to a very large extent the comings and goings of the lives of my children.

So naturally, morning by morning, they stumble downstairs, wrinkled pajamas and wild hair, and they begin looking up, into the face of the people determining their day to get some expectations for what’s ahead. Maybe we could go so far as to say marching orders, but I don’t run quite that tight of a ship. 

In the midst of the big problems, the big questions, the big ordeals of the world these days, I’ve been thinking about what Jesus meant when He said we had to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Perhaps we’ll chat about this a bit more in the weeks to come, but I think one point is especially poignant for us at this very moment in November of 2020.

My kids show an impressive amount of trust while the Hero Hubs and I stand in a position of sovereignty in their lives.

They ask permission, of course. They make requests, absolutely. They complain from time to time. Alas.

But they mostly show up in the morning with an innate understanding that they’re not really in control of what is going to happen with their day. When they have the freedom to get out in the backyard and play, or head upstairs to the land filled with Legos… well, they go wild and enjoy it as best they can.

For the most part it’s more of a follow-the-leader affair.

So what about you and me?

Well someone is going to win an election this week. And, yeah, there’s still this pandemic thing happening. Maybe for you it’s a job thing, a relationship struggle, a bank account or health concern. We’ve all got our struggles, our fights, our discomforts, don’t we?

Maybe becoming more like little children means settling into an understanding that there is a small and finite amount of our lives over which we have control.

Maybe we can settle into the idea that we should do our best with the aspects of our lives we can control.

And maybe we could show up wide-eyed and wrinkled looking up at our Father in the morning, too, to ask for guidance, to place our trust back in His sovereignty, maybe even to ask our own versions of that very important question: “Is it a wash-sumfin day?”

Let’s hold tightly to this wisdom from Corrie Ten Boom this week, with the innocent trust we ought to have, because you and I? We are the children of God.

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Keep walking, and keep trusting, friends. He’s got the whole world in His hands.

P.S. Last week I shared that I was working on a free gift and it is HERE! The 2020 Hassle-Free Holiday Guide is a gift I created to help YOU…

• think through menus
• plan events
• schedule tasks AHEAD of time
• organize the gift-giving process (and more, of course)

It will definitely simplify holiday preparation for you! You can click here to grab your copy! Or mosey over to my 2020 Holiday Gift Guide, and you can grab it there!

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