The language of a child

I have a friend who’s becoming a speech language pathologist. She really enjoys the pediatric population and spends a lot of her time working with kids. We had dinner the other day and she was telling me about how sometimes parents bring their kids for their first visit when they’re 4 or 5, at which time their language development should be well on their way. These kids she sees; however, have a lot of trouble with language. Specifically she told me about one girl who couldn’t make most of the consonant noises we need to make in order to speak intelligibly. And this child first came to see them at age 5, when ideally, she should have been in at age 2 or 3.

Now, the reason it had taken so long for her to come in was because her parents didn’t recognize that she had a problem. There’s this really neat phenomenon whereby parents are often able to understand their children’s communication that the rest of us would be fully unable to decipher. And this had been the case with this young girl, leading to a delayed recognition of this problem until she finally went to school.

So, I think that’s how God is. I think when we pray, our words are often wrong and we don’t know what to ask for or how to pray. We want what is good, we want our friends’ troubles to be eased and our families to be reunited. But I certainly don’t always feel like I know how to ask for that. There’s this funky balance of asking for what I want and think is right and then also just asking God for His will to be done.

As I heard this young girl’s story, I thought it was a beautiful illustration of how our Father hears us when we come to Him in prayer. We may not always be eloquent, we may not ask for the right things or use the rights words – but I think we can certainly be assured that just as a parent understands their child, so, too, does God our Father. He hears our cries, knows our intent and is always faithful to respond.

With this assurance, I think we ought to throw ourselves recklessly into prayer. I think it’s our job to get on our knees and trust that the spirit of God will guide as we pray. I think we need to beg for mercy for ourselves, our families, our friends and our country. And I think we will never be disappointed if we trust that God will do with our prayers what is good and right.

Be warned. but not afraid.

Nobody tells you that growing up is hard.

But it is.

We sort of wander through life when we’re younger – we grow. We develop. We change.

We make friends and we lose friends. And that kind of hurts. But good things seem to follow the bad and we have a path to follow so we keep breathing, keep walking and keep trodding, one foot in front of the other.

Elementary school ends and high school begins. A new set of changes. New situations, circumstances and pressures. New stereotypes to grapple with and relationships to navigate. Things change, but they’re changing in everyone our age, so we walk forward. Perhaps with some trepidation, but we do it knowing that it’s the next step in our life and we walk it with our peers.

When I finished high school, going to university was as easy a decision as going to high school. It wasn’t something that required intense discernment. I certainly thought about the program I would enter and the career it would lead me to, but the actual going to university was easy. So it was for 98% of my graduating class. Faced again by so many unknowns, but assured that we would all face them, there was comfort in the collective unknown.

But when university ends – so do all the givens.

The path is no longer straight and the road is no longer marked.

Everyone born in 1987 has ceased to go where I am going and where they are going, I am not.
Here marks the end of the easy and the beginning of the hard. Here we find the necessity to grow up and to grow apart. Faced again with a myriad of unknowns, the collective unknown is no more. This is now my unknown. It is my choice. It is mine to discover, to face and to embrace. If it’s hard, it’s no longer hard for my entire birth year – it’s just me, and the hard.

And it is hard.

My temptation is to steer clear of this individual growing, choosing and changing. My temptation is to cling to what I know and to find others who will do the same. Because what lies ahead could be anything. And if it doesn’t work for me, it’s now just me who’s made a mistake. And if it’s challenging, I may be the only one challenged. And if I feel alone or scared or unsure, I am no longer certain that I am in good company.

But if I give in to this temptation, if I refuse to move forward and continue to move sideways, I fail.

I fail to become the one I am created to be.

So I choose to walk forward. And I feel a sense of ‘my own’ as I walk this solitary path. For it is on this path that I will discover the plans that have been laid out for me. It is on this journey of mine that I will hope and seek to discover the why behind who I am.

But I will not be deterred by the hard.
I just warn you that is.