My two year old daughter broke her ankle. A month after the break, the cast was removed and the doctors told us that it was healed, but that it might be a little sore. We were instructed not to push her to walk in the first week of it being off, but after a couple weeks of her not showing any signs of wanting to walk on her ankle, my wife and I began to get a little anxious. We came to realize that she did not have pain from the break, she was just scared of experiencing it again. To combat her fear, we had to find a way to make walking seem like fun. Enter The Leaf Thief.
One of our family friends had gifted us a book called The Leaf Thief because it had brought such joy to their young family. The tale of an anxious squirrel who is trying to understand why more of his leaves go missing every fall morning was a big hit to their three boys, and they wanted to share that joy with us. But the book did not resonate in the same manner with our children. They found it fun, but it was one of the many books that got lost on our shelves.
As we were struggling to get our daughter to even set her feet flat on the ground while in the sitting position, we had the idea to encourage her to cover up characters on book covers with her feet. We covered up a unicorn, a rainbow, and Santa Claus, but covering up The Leaf Thief was a hit. The whimsical picture combined with our positive encouragement was enough to not only get our daughter to put her feet flat on the ground, but to also stand up and take steps. There was much joy in our house that day because for the first time in six weeks, our little girl walked.
It struck me that this can be an analogy for spiritual experiences like going on retreat or reading the Word of God. Often when we are given a revelation or a consolation from God, we want to share it with others. It is such a gift that we want others to experience the exact thing that we did. We encourage them to go on the same retreat, read the same book, or understand a scripture passage a certain way. However, on many occasions, the experience does not live up to what we hoped for with whom we shared it, because it does not hit them in the same way, and sometimes we can be disappointed.
In these moments, we can question why God does not reveal Himself in the same way as He did to us. If it was so good for us, it would assuredly be so good for them. But what we fail to realize is that because our faith is a relationship with God, how we encounter experiences of faith are going to vary amongst us. We are not cookie cutter people made to experience everything the same way. Rather, we are called to relate to our Heavenly Father who sees us for us. This means that even though we do not see the same result for others that we ourselves experienced, God is still working and the joy that he gave us might manifest itself in a different way or in a different time, just like The Leaf Thief gave my family the joy of rehabilitation rather than the joy of a whimsical story.
The lesson of my daughter’s ankle and The Leaf Thief is simple, and one that can spill over into the spiritual life: Share good things with other people. But do not expect or be disappointed if God works in a way that is delayed or not the way we expected. His wisdom in giving good things to His children is unmatched, and we are not the mastermind of His love, just the vessel.