Cheerleading

Cheerleading

I have found that everything gets done easier when someone you love is watching you do a hard task.

“Look at me Miss Dee” they respond to me as they are finding the floor. I cheer with wild abandon and they rush around the room picking up the toys to keep me clapping. If my attention waivers, they call for me to look again until they are done.

It astounds me how powerful ATTENTION is, when given to you without reservation or distraction. When I nag, they point fingers and tell me how this person or that person isn’t helping them clean. My girls do it all the time too, for they share a bedroom.

But if I stand over them with praise, if I point out this or that as they start collecting things off the floor, they are given invisible motivation that sustains them through the yucky part of playing – the clean up afterwards.

I am like that in my relationship with my Heavenly Father. The bible tells me that He knows the number hairs on my head. His attention does not falter or become distracted, he knows what I do and usually, his attention is positive on me. Cleaning the toilets for my family who do not appreciate or even think about this service doesn’t motivate me. In fact, I get rather resentful and grumpy about it! But when I view this service in terms of caring for the ones I love my helping to make sure they don’t get sick with nasty germs, my load is lightened.

My attitudes are so darn subjective!

I think that is what makes prayer so valuable to me, it puts me in the right relationship with God. When I am talking to him intimately (‘cause that’s what prayer is to me) I am reminded over and over again of His overwhelming love for me, and how, like a child, he showers me with attention. His love swells inside me as something that I can’t contain, like a sponge filled too full; it spills out into every relationship I have around me.

Attention.

A child teaches me today about rapt attention and it’s power.

And somehow, I am reminded that just as I cheered those animated kids on to do their best for cleaning the floor up… he cheers me on when I clean the toilets.