FROM THE HEART OF A YOUNG NIGERIAN MOTHER - Though The Eyes of a Child

Keeping children at home for the duration of the voters’ registration exercise, meant that I had to alter my schedule to accommodate having my two year old daughter at home for longer periods of time than I’m accustomed to, and find different ways to entertain her. This inevitably meant that I’d have to subject myself to watching ‘Barney’ and ‘Peter Pan’ as many times as she wanted to watch them, no matter how many that happened to be. And just in case I was in any doubt as to what she wanted, she would go and bring the CD case to me; just to be sure we understood each other.

Having then resigned myself to my fate, she, I mean we watched ‘Cinderella’ again the other day. As I gazed fondly at my child, watching the expressions of awe at the versatility of the characters, delight at their hilarious antics and consternation at the various scrapes they got themselves into, it occurred to me that she reacted the same way to the same scenes, every single time she watched the films.

It drove home to me the reason Jesus asked us to have the heart of a child in order to enter the kingdom of God. While an adult would have been bored with the sameness of a particular thing, a child would find something fresh and exciting in it. A child would have the same level of enthusiasm every time – I mean my girl would always protest whenever I had to switch her film off, even if she was practically drooping with fatigue and her eyes were half closed!

Not only that, she would expect me to share her excitement as well, constantly running to me to report whoever she felt was being naughty, asking me, ‘Mummyyyyy! What he doing?’ or ‘Ah ah! (then she mutters something unintelligible to me but which obviously made perfect sense to her) naw!!’

Looking at my child, I remind myself again that I need to take time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life; to approach life and work with the confidence that my Heavenly Father completely understands my needs and would see that I got them. That would make me receive the outcome of problem and solution or cause and effect with the same anticipation as at every other time He comes through for me, with wide-eyed delight…..and a thankful heart.