It's the little things

So here we go my second post today - I promise not to make this one as lengthy, mostly because it's already 8:30 and I'm having trouble staying awake as it is. I simply don't have the stamina for a long post tonight. When I got home yesterday I arrived in town just in time to pick up Jack from the sitters and take him to school for his afternoon pre-K program. Normally I'm pretty frustrated about interrupting my day and driving across town to take care of this chore - it really breaks up my day. We used to have sitters that literally lived a few houses away from his school so they would walk him over and pick him up and Joanna and I could focus on the work we had to do at the office - God's work (as I would tell myself).  But eventually all good things must come to an end (or so they say) and we were effectively "fired" by our sitters because they had to cut some kids to comply with home daycare regulations and we started the long journey toward finding new daycare for our kids.

Long story short, after a couple of failed starts and a messy few weeks in between sitters we found someone else that we liked and that was willing to take us as a part-time client. Jack and Harry are treated well, they are in a Christian environment and we feel good about the level of care and attention they get - but our current sitter doesn't have the ability to take Jack to school in the afternoons. Joanna and I have to share that duty between us, which is essentially a half-hour process twice a day: Driving to the sitters, getting Jack ready to go, loading him up, driving to school, getting him settled in class, and driving back to work. And then around three-o-clock every afternoon we reverse that process. Most of the time I see this responsibility as an annoyance, it takes away our lunch hours (which are often prime times for meeting with people), it interrupts our afternoons (and really takes a bite out of staff meeting which is always being cut short by one of us departing to pick Jack up after school) and I generally feel guilty about using up work time to drive my kid around town. But not yesterday.

Yesterday for the first time in a long while I was looking forward to picking up Jack and taking him to school. Yesterday I couldn't wait to walk up to the door and greet my little boy. Yesterday I realized that this responsibility wasn't a chore at all - it was a privilege. I have the opportunity to see my little boy multiple times a day when many parents are forced by their workplace expectations to go long hours without meaningful contact; I get to see where my boy goes to school and to interact with his teachers on a regular basis and find out how he's doing, I get the joy of knowing that I'm an important part of my son's life and see the joy on his face when I walk up to the door of the sitter's and he know's that Daddy is coming for him; and I get to ask him about his day at school right after it happens hearing the things that he's excited about, frightened of, and proud of accomplishing right when it's fresh in his mind rather than waiting until later in the evening when he is preoccupied with something else. Yesterday as I walked up to the door of the sitter's house to pick up Jack for school I got to see my special little boy for the first time in a dozen days and the only thing that compared to the smile on my face was the one on his. Daddy was home and it was the highlight of his day.

I loaded Jack into the van and drove to the school. We talked about his week, and his time with Nanny and his special student day (which I missed while I was away) but when I put the van in park in front of his school I heard him say something that just simply melted my heart. Jack got out of his seat and came forward to the front row and said in the sweetest tone, "Thanks for driving me to school Daddy." Never has such a simple act of gratitude meant so much to me.

It's the little things that matter most in the Kingdom of God. The willingness to do a menial task out love love rather than obligation, the simple gift of the widow's two mites in the offering plate, the expression of hospitality to a stranger - the cup of cold water in the name of Christ and of course, the simple heart-felt thank you of a child. My tendency in life is to focus on the big picture, to cast grand vision and see the world in broad strokes - but I'm coming to realize that if I want to be like Christ in the way I live my life I need to be much more concerned about the little things. Walking in discipleship of Christ is about doing the little things right again and again until they become a pattern of character and priority that defines us. And in this season of Lent that's what I want to practice with this purging of my Transformers.

Which brings us to Transformer number three. In keeping with the theme of little things I have decided to part with the 2007 Movie line figure Elita One. Elita One was not a character who actually appeared in the movie but rather was a repaint of another character designed to fill out the toy line. And as a scout class figure (read: small) she's not the type of toy I usually spend money on collecting but it's not her size that makes her special. You see Elita One has two very special things going for her that make her important to my collection. Firstly, she's a Target exclusive figure. Limited release/Store exclusives always hold a higher collectible value than mass release figures. And secondly, she's one of the few figures that I've managed to keep MISB (Mint in sealed box) which drives up her value further. Unlike Prime and Megatron who I've already purged, it's the little things that make this selection special. And I hope that's a lesson that I can apply further on in life than this blog.

Until later,
Chris