Learning to Get Dressed

Anna has the capability to do many more things, if we would slow down and let her! She may be slower, but she is not dumb! We have run into a problem with all our hurrying around...she prefers to be dressed by us, rather than to dress herself. I recently realized that our convenience is working a greater inconvenience as she gets older. It is not allowing what we both need...maturity.

So what's a parent to do, when what seems quicker in the beginning is now harder and more time consuming with age? 

DISTANCE. 

I stand back so she knows my hands will not help her.  This is important because it is my hands that she will always reach for first. Now she is learning to hear my voice of instruction to get dressed, step by step, from across the room.:-) I am learning to slow down.

In the same way, if I am to grow up as a mature daughter, I must learn to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14) always paying close attention to His voice. Like Anna, I want it easy and I'm always looking for His hand, forgetting that it is His heart for me to GROW UP. 

Sometimes that means distance, but He is not far.

These times teach me not to rely so much on what I feel. I can see the importance of “hearing and doing” step by step, but to know His heart, and BE His mature daughter is my hearts cry. 

Getting dress, in HIM, then becomes as natural as breathing....Isn't that the way it should be?

 "Growth in grace is measured not by the fact that you have not gone back, but that you have an insight into where you are spiritually; you have heard God say "Come up higher," not to you personally but to the insight of your character.~Oswald Chambers