God’s Garden

This week I opted to write a story for the kids. I’ve been deterred by this idea because I really can’t draw and I know at this age it is the pictures that really draw them in but I decided it was the best vehicle for what I was trying to introduce and the most intimate. I could get them to quiet down and sit on my lap where they would be more focused.

I do believe that “story telling” is a powerful vehicle at their age, much more so than ours. By the time we are adults much of the information we take in is filtered through the logical analytical parts of us. There is something called “invariant representation” which is a process whereby our brain will cut off access to somatic areas of the brain and simply have us relate to something on the conceptual level. In other words, when we see our house we may be “seeing” the concept of our house rather than our house itself. We don’t really experience the house, we interact with the idea of the house in our head. This is efficient for a variety of reasons but we lose quite a bit. It is why children can watch the same thing over and over as if for the first time- all their circuitry is online. They are not dealing with the “idea” of something, they are experiencing the something itself. This is what we gradually lose as we have more and more contact with the world around us. So story is a powerful experience for children- the magic is still there. They sit closer to their imaginations and inner worlds than we do. We analyze, they experience. Stories may not be as powerful for us because we need to experience more.

The “story” I “wrote” was “God’s Garden” and I drew from the garden of Eden theme. I wanted them to think about walking with God. The “story” instructed them to close their eyes and imagine walking with God in the garden. It lasted briefly but they both engaged in the exercise. My 4 year old talked about seeing the bees in his garden.

I then gave them paper and asked them to draw a picture as if God were making a picture for them. My 2 1/2 year old was scribbling and making lots of dots on the page. My oldest saw that and said that God knows Maddox likes dots. The very first thing my 4 year old wanted to draw was a heart.

My oldest then wanted to write his own book and put it together with some of the same elements as mine but he included a page that said “God loves you.” Later that day we watched the movie Animal Crackers and when a character declared “I am a God,” Max said, “No he isn’t, God’s nice and there is only one God.” What I love about these utterances is that they come from him. I’m not dogmatic or very “teachy,” most of what they have learned about God have been from these Sunday School lessons. I don’t talk about it every day and tend to just wait for moments to arise. So when I hear him say these things it’s exciting because these are connections that he is making and thinking about. I love that he is embracing God’s kindness because God is much kinder than I am. I wish and pray that I could be kinder and gentler but I make mistakes, God never does. In the story, I remind them that God’s voice is kind. I got that reminder from an author that I recently got in contact with and it was such a nice reminder.

We were at the park the other day and while my oldest son was on the swing he told me that he could see God’s love. He phrased it in a really unique Max kind of way, talking about how God was dropping His love in places. I didn’t get the full gist but I was thankful that he was thinking about these things and trusting that God was showing him something that would mean something between the two of them.