God rested—now I can too!

We started our day today with another "encouraging" event similar to the one we had yesterday. I was cooking eggs and bacon for breakfast this morning, assisted, of course, by my two gourmet sidekicks. (Hannah even cracked the eggs all by herself—big stuff in her world!) I guess all the excitement from that must have tired her out because she decided to stop helping after the eggs were in the pan cooking. Millie, however, decided to stay and help with the bacon. Or maybe I should say help herself to the bacon! She sampled raw bacon!!! Needless to say, I freaked out a little. I remember scrubbing her tongue with a washcloth while yelling something about trichonella. The rest is all a blur. Anyway, I felt this was reason enough for both children to be banned from the kitchen until everything was cooked to a nice safe temperature.

Hannah, who has once before
Hannah, who every now and then
Hannah, who often
Hannah, who always thinks the rules apply to everyone except her, proceeded to march right over to where the bacon was so she could continue to play sous chef. I told her that they both needed to leave the kitchen so I could finish breakfast. She said, "Mommy, I won't do what Millie did." Meanwhile, eggs are burning on the stove because I spent valuable minutes scrubbing bacteria out of Camille's mouth that I hadn't planned on. So I told Hannah, "Not today. Mommy's stressed." She ran straight back to her room, devastated that she couldn't lay the bacon on a plate and stick it in the microwave.

So what's impressive about that? Well, it was the way she handled herself when she came back into the kitchen. She came up to me and said, "Mom, I'm sorry." I hugged her and asked, "For what?" She said, "For throwing a tantrum." Then she pulled up a chair right next to me and asked, "Is it okay if I sit here next to you while we eat?" WOW! Two days in a row of calmly righting a wrong—and self-initiated to boot! Could it be that (I'm almost afraid to let the words flow from my fingertips) Hannah might be learning self-control and repentance?

Once breakfast was consumed and chores were done, we got around to doing school. We studied Day 7 of creation, when God rested. I got a good chuckle out of Hannah when it was time to make the last page of her creation book. She said, "Hey! God didn't make anything today, so I don't have to either!" She started off with a plain sheet of white paper with only her sentence on it, but I guess it was too much white space for her little eyes to take in, so she ended up drawing a picture of God in bed. The square around His body is His blanket, and the oval behind His head is His pillow.


We talked about how God rested for a day and how Sunday is our day of rest, so for our special snack today we went to DQ and had—what else?—sundaes!


I've always wondered why God needed His day of rest. I mean, He is God, after all! Omnipotent and all that. But after creating a simple snack every day for the past week, I can see why He needed it! I did sometimes feel like it was "one more thing to do," but in hindsight I'm glad we did the snacks because, number one, the kids really enjoyed it; and number two, it really is amazing how much it has helped Hannah recall the events of creation. And it makes me wonder if God might have thought about the sun, the moon, the leaves—so many things in His creation—as "one more thing to do," but He did it anyway because He knew we would delight in it and it would reveal something to us about Him.

That being said, since God rested after all His creating, I think I will too!