Being Careful

PSA: If at any point in time you hear this sweet child of mine yell "It's okay, I'm being careful for you!" ... She is almost certainly doing something ridiculously risky and/or dangerous, hence, creating the need to be careful. 🤦🏼‍♀️

It's also wise to become suspicious if you hear either of my children say "I'm not hiding anything behind my back...", "I'm not doing anything.", "I'm okay!" Or any other variation of these things. 🤷🏼‍♀️

It's one of the things I love about littles ... They wear their hearts on their sleeves and their intentions are written all over their faces. They aren't generally great at being sneaky and that is, more often than not, a wonderful thing.

I always chuckle to myself when the girls are trying to spy or sneak and end up giving themselves away, but I am grateful for their declarations of "I'm being careful" that serve as a warning to let me know I need to figure out (quickly) exactly *why* we are being careful. 

You see, as human nature goes, as my girls grow they will get better at sneaking. Instead of yelling out to tell me they are "being careful" they are liable to grow quieter in those moments when they feel the need to take caution because of a choice they are making   It's not a thing I want to have happen - in fact, I'm prepared to work quite hard against it - but isn't it something we all do?

If we ever feel ourselves "toeing a line" between right and wrong - a good choice and a questionable one - we don't shout "I'm being careful!" But we certainly think it to ourselves.

If we're hanging with the questionable crowd, if we're visiting a questionable place, if we're watching or reading a questionable thing and we know we should reconsider we reassure ourselves with the mantra "I'll be careful". It's like we're saying "it's fine, I can toe this line and come out on the right side of things." And, well, if you really want to know my thoughts on "walking the line", you can read a little about them here.

When we whisper - to ourselves and God in our own heads - "I'm being careful for you" it is no different than a two year old yelling out to her Momma. It's our the instincts we were born with kicking in and shout for help. Sometimes I think our instinct to ask for help may have been shoved down by years of the world working to harden our hearts and that "I'm being careful" is our quiet plea for someone to bail us out ... Or, at least, it should be. 

So, next time you have to say "It's okay, I'm being careful for you." remind yourself that when a two year old says it what it really means is "I'm doing something I probably shouldn't be and may need help at any second." ....and it may very well mean that same thing for you, too.