My daughter's enjoyment of baking, as a regular reader will know, is an area in which I actively and intentionally try to connect with her. Those moments are for me an opportunity to be with her, and I capture them even as I cherish them. Cherish her. The project of the brownies, however, while provided for in advance, had not been a project which I was considering the day we were shopping for items needed for my birthday cake. I simply love my daughter, and just bought the extra ingredients because I figured it would come in handy for her somewhere down the road, and because I wanted her well supplied.
Well, as it turned out, I hand been only been planning to take the kids to their beloved burger joint that day, just as a matter of course to spend time with them and to bless them. I began to look forward to it, even, despite being vegetarian and uncertain if there was anything there which I could eat. But those were the only plans I had intending to make happen.
So when she asked if she could bake the brownies (for which we had the ingredients already on hand), it was not even a question if we would, despite it being a project for which I had had no prior inclinations towards, nor had it fit into my plans for the day.
In that moment there was nothing more expected than that we would do that very thing, nothing more natural to come about or to occur than that we would bake the brownies, together -- as if I had been planning to do that all along. But that is the subtle nuance, the rub (so to speak): the specific activity of baking -- being "our thing," being what WE do together -- became folded into my very plan to bless the children. Baking, put differently, is what I wanted to do because it is baking with her, and thus what I wanted to do for the day, despite having more which I wanted for them.
And I enjoyed doing it, being fully there in the moment, baking together with my daughter; I delighted, and delighted in the project itself. I got into the moment and I had fun. I hadn't even needed to make it anything other than what it was --that is, time spent with her -- but I did use it as a teaching moment, when she began to obsess a little over her performance with and inability to use the mixer. I explained how it was that I really only did a tiny part, and she had actually brought it all together, and that performance isn't reducible to what she can not do well in. But my purpose was the spending of time with her, the being with her. As a matter of fact, I did the best job I could do because it was important to her. I found it important to really pour myself into its success as if it were own project, simply because it was important to her (and thus worth doing well). And all of this aside from the plan I had had for the day.
Bottom lining all of this: what my daughter wants to do and delights in doing I want to do, because it means doing it with her, but more so (and since it is worth it to her) it is important to me to pour myself into, for it to become my project. While the big picture of the day and it's plans hadn't included it, my daughter's project was every bit my own, and for no other nor less a reason than because it is important to her, and to no less a degree of delight for myself. Just as last week (see last post / entry) her friend became a part of the family in the moment, so this week her plans and delights became my plans and delights.
In this opening up (and seeking to open up) to what my daughter finds important, in this shoehorning of something and shoehorning of myself into something (to the very extent of enjoying myself in it) all because of my daughter finding it important, in all this I see a model of the father-heart of God for us. "Delight yourselves in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart," fascinatingly, finds God the Father In Heaven Himself delighting alongside of us, giving us the desires of our (and of His) hearts. He delights with us in our delights -- at least in so far as they are those good things He gives us to delight in together with Him, which is quite a bit. No good thing does He withhold, though practically some things come before others, yet in all good things He delights alongside of us in them, intentionally doing so.
Bottom lining all of this: what my daughter wants to do and delights in doing I want to do, because it means doing it with her, but more so (and since it is worth it to her) it is important to me to pour myself into, for it to become my project. While the big picture of the day and it's plans hadn't included it, my daughter's project was every bit my own, and for no other nor less a reason than because it is important to her, and to no less a degree of delight for myself. Just as last week (see last post / entry) her friend became a part of the family in the moment, so this week her plans and delights became my plans and delights.
In this opening up (and seeking to open up) to what my daughter finds important, in this shoehorning of something and shoehorning of myself into something (to the very extent of enjoying myself in it) all because of my daughter finding it important, in all this I see a model of the father-heart of God for us. "Delight yourselves in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart," fascinatingly, finds God the Father In Heaven Himself delighting alongside of us, giving us the desires of our (and of His) hearts. He delights with us in our delights -- at least in so far as they are those good things He gives us to delight in together with Him, which is quite a bit. No good thing does He withhold, though practically some things come before others, yet in all good things He delights alongside of us in them, intentionally doing so.