Instant Gratification

I grew up with parents who didn't know what a glass half empty looked like. Thus, my ever-positive mindset comes rather naturally. I am grateful for this perspective, but I am also human. There are times when my thoughts are not so Rosie the Riveter.

Sometimes it feels as though Levi's progress is slow as molasses. It pains me to watch him struggle through every normal and otherwise automatic development. Fixing one thing simply delays another. We must try and address every potential issue, but sometimes I wonder if he'll ever grow. Then I am reminded that I've bought into our current state of instant gratification thinking. We simply aren't used to waiting for anything for more than about five minutes; anything that takes longer loses our business quickly. Levi will have such a leg up on his family members when it comes to patience. Hopefully, his tolerance for waiting will be ingrained in his development.

I am trying to read through the Bible this year from a "mixed plan" that involves both old and new testament scripture simultaneously. I've recently read multiple accounts of people from old, who had to wait ridiculous amounts of time to see God's miracles fulfilled. Not only did Noah stay on a boat for 40 days, but it struck me this time how even when he sent out multiple birds and "knew" the land was dry enough for him to leave the boat, he still waited until God told him personally that he could leave. Talk about some patience to wait on God and not your own intuition.
Likewise, Abraham waited until he was 100 to see God's promise of an heir fulfilled. I doubt any of us would keep believing his word past fifty. His grandson Jacob worked twenty years for his father-in-law before he was able to leave and find his own land with his own family. Of course Moses' waiting through Pharaoh's continual denials with every kind of plague imaginable seems almost ridiculous when read aloud.
Now fast forward to Jesus' time on Earth, and people got to see miracles happen in a matter of days or seconds. If you believed he could heal you, then it happened "according to your faith." Talk about some instant gratification. People knew that they could merely touch Jesus or speak to him and whatever ailed them vanished.
We know that miracles and unexplained healing still happen in our world today; however, like most of us, we'd rather read the accounts in the new testament surrounding God's perfect love and grace. We forget that our idea of time is not the same as His, and we must never look only to the new testament because it wouldn't exist without the old.

As such, I will always try to celebrate Levi's days with or without progress because I must remember that each of his breaths is a sort of unexplained miracle.

Levi doesn't know how to pick up food with index and thumb, because he won't eat anything but a thin puree in small doses. He hates stuff in his mouth, so he left this on his lip for quite a while before it bothered him. :D