Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Park

My kids love to play at the park. Just this week we went to a park close to our house. The equipment is normal playground kind of stuff. There are some monkey bars, a few swings, three slides, and some great lookout points. There is even a merry go round! What makes this park unique is it’s setting. On one side is a lake, home to ducks, swans, and geese. On another side is a waterpark and swimming pool. The other two sides are surrounded by streets and homes. To carve out the playground, there are blue Lincoln log barriers in the ground. They are bolted together to form the perimeter of two kidney beans smashed together. The Lincoln logs also hold in all the mulch that pads the ground for little feet to walk on.

At our visit to this park, I was so amused watching my kids and their reactions to the barriers. I told both my four year old and my one year old that outside the blue line was “No-no”. The areas surrounding this park could be dangerous and I wanted them to stay inside the lines. Being a toddler, my one year immediately put one foot up on top of the barrier and looked back at me to see if that was alright. I said, “No,” and he stepped back. Then he went to another section of the barrier and tried again. I repeated my no and he moved on. For twenty minutes he tried new places to see if the answer changed. Twenty minutes in the life a one year old is a long time! In that twenty minutes he missed playing to continually test the rules.

My four year old is a little different. She is, without a doubt, my strong willed child. But today she watched the antics of her little brother while she played on the slides. When he finally moved on to trying to eat the mulch, she was ready to make her move. She is pretty afraid of the geese that live on the lake because they are so loud. So, she didn’t want to go that way. She knew that the waterpark was closed so that didn’t really interest her either. Instead, she saw a basketball goal in a driveway across the street. She loves basketball. While I was busy pulling mulch out of the baby’s mouth, she worked her way across the playground equipment and got a huge thrust going down the slide that faces the basketball goal. That was enough to put her just beyond the barrier and she made a dash for the basketball goal. I caught her with one foot in the street.

If my five year old had been there, she would have never even tried out the barriers. She would have played on anything she could reach. Her only glance would have been in fear toward the swan, who charged her one time! She might have mentioned that she wanted to go the waterpark again this summer.

Each of them sees those blue Lincoln logs differently. One as a test. One as a dare and one as a wall. I’m sure there are some really deep parallels to draw here about how we should be content with the space God gives us or how we should view obstacles in our path.

I’m happy if one of those lessons speaks to you. I’m content to marvel at how different each of my three blessings are.

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