Babysitting Popcorn
December 12, 2021 by Michelle Lim
Filed under Daily Devotions, Family
By Michelle Lim –
Kids are the most creative moochers alive. If you don’t think so, just ask my five year old about babysitting popcorn.
I love popcorn. Thankfully, most of my kids prefer a different kind of popcorn than me. But my youngest will delight in whatever is available. He likes to shadow me to enjoy both his snack time and mine.
On one such afternoon, I’d popped a bowl of Kettle Corn and sat down to check email. Before you know it, two little eyeballs topped off with a carrot-top cowlick popped up over the edge of the blanket. Then, a shuffle of feet.
He is sitting next to me, feet extended, grabbing a handful of popcorn and cramming it in his mouth before I catch on and stop him. The phone rang and the next thing I knew, I was half a bowl down.
He folded his hands in his lap as I hung the phone to stare in my deplenished stash. Of course my son was feeling a bit sheepish about overtaking my snack, right?
NOPE!
His next words told the story. “Mommy, I think I’d like to babysit your popcorn for you.”
“You realize babysitting involves taking excellent care of them, not eating them?”
He giggled.
If I let him babysit my popcorn bowl, I’d have had not a kernel to spare. All in good fun, I would have feared the worst, anticipating bad news.
Our faith is much the same way. Sometimes we lay out our plans filled with all of the right ingredients, but it is hard to leave it in God’s hands. After all, in the process of watching over them, I often let my plans morph into something I didn’t intend at the beginning.
Just like my son thought he’d only eat one piece of popcorn, pretty soon he was babysitting popcorn and changing the whole picture.
Are you babysitting popcorn? Are you changing the picture in your own way because you just can’t trust it to God? I relate to this way more than I should.
Believe that God can handle your dreams. It is time to let God do the babysitting. After all, how can you chase your dreams and put the work in necessary to succeed if you can’t trust God to follow through?
“They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them” (Psalm 112:7 NIV)
Michelle Lim is a pastor's daughter and mom of four with a heart for teaching. She is a Romantic Suspense writer with three complete manuscripts that have earned contest recognition, as well as the nonfiction author of "Idea Sparking: Brainstorming Conflict In Your Novel" which releases in September. Michelle is the Brainstorm/Huddle Coach at My Book Therapy and serves as Vice President of MN N.I.C.E., a local chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers.