Contentment Lessons from a Toddler

It’s nothing new that children as small as Lucy can hear something you say once, and then repeat it at the appropriate (or inappropriate!) time. But during the last few weeks, God has used her to remind me of a very important lesson just with the simple fact that she has been repeating something I say.

Often when we are grocery shopping together and we get ready to finish up and check out, I say, “Okay! We have everything we need.. we can go now!” I never realized how often I say it or how much she is understanding.

A couple of days ago, I was sitting, making a list of the gifts that we had bought and the ones we still had yet to buy while she was playing in her playroom. I must admit, I was slightly stressing over all that we still “had” to do on the budget we had. Don’t get me wrong, we drastically cut back this year… mostly out of necessity.  I was worrying that by making a simple Christmas budget this year, we would leave someone out or hurt someone’s feelings… I worried that I wasn’t doing enough for my own parents and in laws when they have all done so much for us… I was thinking that maybe we should buy Lucy another small toy…

Enter Lucy with her pink shopping cart and a purse on her shoulder.
“Mommy! Look! I have EVERYTHING I need! I have everything I need, Mommy!” 
I look down in her shopping cart and I see her sippy cup of milk, her favorite doll, and a book–and a hot dog bun from her kitchen set.
At first I just smiled at her in disbelief, knowing she couldn’t possible be reading my mind but still knowing that the One who made her did.
Luckily, I recovered and said something like, “You sure do! are you having fun?!” to which she replied, “YES.”
And she wheeled around, happy as can be, and went about her playing in the other room.

In the past couple of days, she has said this phrase several times and each time, I try to really HEAR her and be reminded, that “YES, she does.”  SO DO I. SO DO WE ALL. This year, we have enjoyed several new, fun experiences with Lucy since she is a bit older and more able to understand–but even with all of this, I realize, “Enough is enough.” Meaning, we have enough. What we can afford to do is enough. Praise God, she is not quite at that point where enough does not feel like enough. But she will be soon, because she is human. My prayer is that we will continue to reinforce the fact we are happy and healthy and loved with what God chooses to PROVIDE for all of us. And we have enough. And if we were to be totally honest, enough is kind of an understatement. We have more than we NEED.

Because massive amounts of stuff or not, (preferably not!) we have Everything we need!