December 4

A warm car and a twenty-or-so-minute wait for big brother to get out of school make it pretty likely that a three-year-old will succumb to a little nap.

This sweet child has made me work for it today. His questions have ranged from big, huge, important wonderings — Will I be God someday? Did God make sin? and Will Jesus be happy with our Christmas lights for his birthday? — to the more mundane details, such as why the light is on in the checkout at the store and what that sign says and why they call it popcorn and why they call it a blinker and why the light is red and what “boring” means and if we went to the movie theater when he was a baby and why they call them camels and if I can make him a Franklin and Friends costume for next Halloween and why that baby is named Judah and what it says on the back of that sticker and what number comes after 47. I could go on. (In fact, I just heard him ask Jason at bedtime, “Why do girls don’t have penises?”) I want to take his questions — all of them — seriously. I hope he (and his siblings too) continues to ask me, even when he figures out I don’t have all the answers. I am consistently amazed at how much and how little these little souls understand, and I feel honored and humbled at the responsibility I have. Lord, help me.

DPP pics from past years: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012