I was driving down the road today and I saw a little girl running in her yard. The sun was shining down on her and her waist length tresses streamed out behind her, gold ribbons dancing in the wind.
It made me think about when I was a kid, how the wind would whip through my hair, and in my youthful innocence I imagined that the wind started blowing when I went outside, just so it could play with my hair.
I know, it sounds so vain, and I'll admit to a certain level of vanity, but perhaps it was not as vain as it sounds.
In Moses 1:39 it says: For behold, this is my work and my glory- to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.
You see, right there in black and white, it's about us, all of it. The whole focus of God's Eternal Life, the thing He Glories in, His greatest work, is US.
When I was younger I didn't understand that concept. I didn't understand why it would be about us. What could matter about us so much that God would care? I thought people loved for reasonS. I thought they loved you because you were pretty, or funny, or smart, or kind, or even because you were superwoman and were all of those things at the same time.
I didn't get it, I didn't get it for the longest time, after I became a mother. Then I understood that parents and God don't need reasonS, they have A reason. You are theirs.
God loves us because we are His. Not because there is something or a group of somethings about us that make us special. He loves us because we are HIS. He loves us because we are part of Him, the way our children are part of us.
When we love a child that child carries around a part of our very essence. We watch and protect that child, long to ease that child's pain, dream for that child, and feel the breath catch in our throats at the beauty of that child.
So when that little girl was running across her yard, I watched her and God watched her. I was awed by the beauty of the moment, but God was watching her and loving her, fluttering her hair with the wind He provides for her, warming her with the sun that He lit for her.
This is the constant, eternal, love of God, a love so great that it sustains us even when we ignore it. A love so great that it provides a way for us to begin to understand it, that we may accept it. God sends us children to teach us about His love, to teach us about how important we are to Him. He gives us these souls to show us how effective a parent can be even when the child seems to not be listening; to show us that constant care for those we love can be long, hard, and unappreciated, but that it is worth it. God gives us children to show us how the process of growth is not meant to be easy, on them OR on us, but that the growth is vital to success.
That is the beauty of The Plan, His Plan.
So next time your hair is whipped around in the wind, please know, that wind WAS sent for you. Your Heavenly Father just wants to play with His darling little one's hair for a minute, because He loves you.
