The One About the Hubris and Humility of a Six-Year Old (and Her Dad)

Dear West Family

My daughter Katie is one of my favorite human beings on the planet. She is truly spectacular and makes me laugh like no other person possibly could. She is also currently driving us crazy.

Katie is 6, but you would never guess it through the experience you receive of the current rollercoaster of her emotional world. She either comes across as 16 or 6-months old, and never really anything in between. She swings between fierce and vehement demands of independence and then sudden and total (and quite dramatic) insistences of utter dependence for everything. In one moment she will argue passionately that her mother and I are incorrect on extremely complex issues of current affairs and then in the next she will insist that she doesn’t know how to eat yogurt on her own.

It’s a lot. And a lot of fun. But also just a lot.

This played out powerfully at bedtime in our house just a few nights ago. After insisting that she didn’t need our help with anything for what felt like several hours, Katie then disappeared into her room for what felt like a long time given the relatively simple instruction of “please put your pajamas on, and don’t use the ones with the buttons.” After about 30 minutes I heard the call from the top of the stairs that gets every dad moving regardless of their current comfort level on the couch, and I must add that my comfort level was high … very high. 

“Daddy. I need your help. Please daddy.”

I responded immediately and willingly knowing that she will not always call for her daddy when she needs help and that I have limited opportunities left to answer that call. She was standing at the top of the stairs in the pajamas that we had told her not to put on and she had clearly exasperated all her efforts to get her buttons to line up without success and so was now summoning an expert to help her in her time of crisis.

My heart broke to see her cute weakness and her humility in that moment, and it got me thinking.

I am a lot more like little Katie than I care to admit. Most of my life is lived in displays of fierce and unfounded independence and it is usually only when I have frustrated all other options when I turn to my Heavenly Father in prayer. I too am a strange collision of hubris and humility and my prayer gives me away as such.

You see, prayer is a wonderful declaration of weakness, of need, of humility. By its very nature, prayer declares that we are not God, and that we need someone stronger and wiser than us to help. It also declares, in that moment, that the God of the Heavens is that one that we need, and we anticipate that we will be met by Him with mercy, gentleness and love.

Katie’s life would be so much easier if she just asked for help in the first place.My life would be so much better if I just went to my Heavenly Father in prayer more readily.

Why don’t you stop whatever you are doing now and spend a minute going to your Father in Heaven in a posture of child-like humility and dependency? Your prayer doesn’t need to be more eloquent than Katie’s cry for help.

“Father, I need your help. Please Father.”

He will respond to you as a good dad always does.

One more thing. Katie loves this song, and so do I!

I Won't Let You Go Feat. Lauren Daigle (LIVE)

See you Sunday,
Ross