Understanding

So far in my life, I have no found a feeling that compares to the one I feel when I watch a kid learning to read. They look on their face when they realize that they just read a book for the first time (cold read, never seen the book before) completely on their own.

They work so hard to learn sight words, words like "a, and, the, and it" that we use in everyday sentences and we don't even think about it. They practice and they struggle to remember what they are, their poor little brains are flooded with these little words that make no sense on their own. Then you string a few together in the silly little books that have no literary basis whatsoever, and voila! We have a reader.

"I see a cat. I see a dog. I see a fish. I see a frog."

But they read it. All on their own. Suddenly those words have meaning and structure. They know why they have been practicing those words. Yes, they have been told that this will happen one day, but they were beginning to think you made it up. They can read! And they know it!

Today was that day for one of the kids. He could read a book. Two actually. His joy was intense, and so was mine. He ran around so excited, reading the book to his family, who were also very excited, and I just thanked God for being privileged enough to experience that moment.

I think as adults we forget that learning to read was a process. Maybe you still struggle to read, and so you are reminded daily that it is a process, but I have been reading so long that I sometimes forget what it took.

As adults we go through life, and we struggle with little things. Sometimes it feels like we struggle with the same things every day. Day after day I find myself saying to God, "WHY haven't I learned this yet? Why do I still struggle with this? Why is it so hard for me to learn?"

1 Corinthians 13 is a famous passage, but the last few verses have always been more interesting to me than the ones about love. Verses 9-12 say this:

"For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."

God promises that one day I will have my Ah Ha! moment. One day I will have full understanding. As a person who gets so excited by even the littlest ah ha moments for kids, I can't imagine how amazing that Ah Ha moment will be when we finally have full understanding. I look forward to that day, and press on though the hard days of learning, knowing that one day, I will understand.