As I listened to the lilt in her voice when she read Mrs. Frisby’s part in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and then to the deepening of her speech when it was time to read the lines of the bossy rat Brutus, I smiled to myself because my daughter not only “got it” but also seemed to delight in reading aloud.
I was also delighting in the moment for another reason; my memory compelled me back to her first-grade year when many days I wondered if any of the phonics she was learning would ever sink in, wondered if reading would ever bring her joy. In teaching her to read, I rarely saw significant progress overnight; instead, it was a combination of steady pressing through each lesson, constantly reviewing, and frankly, being disciplined to go back to that tedious “thing” daily. I couldn’t see the inside of her brain where gradually (soooo. extremely. gradually.) new neural pathways were forming, and those phonograms strung together to form written words were slowly settling into her long-term memory.
Though I couldn’t see it, growth was occurring, and eventually she was reading. Even though I had a front-row seat to this success (and many others) which would occur only through slow and steady progress, I am still impatient in waiting on growth in other areas of life and parenting. Isn’t it crazy how we quickly forget the victories and start worrying about something else? I, like you, could list a thousand other examples of slow and steady growth I’ve witnessed, yet when it comes to progress of almost any kind—progress in my faith, in my family’s lives, in our schoolwork—I want it all to come together TODAY, not next year or, heaven forbid, in five or ten more years!
If we’re anything like the Israelites, we have spiritual amnesia. And we certainly want to avoid any sort of process that might be uncomfortable, painful, or tedious. In our amnesia and discomfort, we forget God’s faithfulness to us. We keep forgetting that the unseen, ongoing growth is one of the ways He always works within us. But Jesus said this is how the kingdom of God works: “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:26-29 NIV).
Night and day, whether we know it or not, in a way we can’t fully understand, God is taking us from seed to stalk to head to full kernel ripe grain – as individuals and as His entire kingdom. He’s growing faith in us; He’s doing a work in us that we cannot do on our own. And we can’t forget that he’s also at work in the lives of the people around us. He loves them even more than we do! We don’t have to “fix” them today, right this minute! We get to love them while they are in process too. Maybe the reason that I can’t seem to “hurry God up” in “fixing them” is because God is trying to slow me down. Yes, He’s slowing us down, sister, so that He can do a new thing in us . . . a new thing like patience, gentleness, mercy, love.
“He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8 ESV).
This verse in Micah always slows me down; it’s all boiled down to a slow and steady walk with God. I don’t have to hurry Him up; He knows exactly what He’s doing . . . in His kingdom, in my children, and in me.
