A Little Humor and a Heavy Heart

This week Maryn is in a wonderful Vacation Bible School. She is so easily excited about these things. She has a love for life and of hanging with friends! She woke in the morning bright-eyed and ready to put on her pretty dress because she was going to see her friend from school, Bryson. I heard her crying in the bathroom because she couldn't get her hair clip on just right. I went to help her and while talking to her and trying to calm her down she stepped back and began to fall backwards. I tried to grab her and in one of those slow-motion moments that you wish you could take back, I saw her begin to fall. She's going down and there is nothing I can do! In a split second it is all over and Maryn is legs up in the air, hiney in the toilet filled with Dylan's pee (do boys ever learn to put the seat down!), crying her eyes out. The only words she can manage to get out are: "This has never happened to me in my whole life!" After getting all cleaned up and changing her clothes, I sat in the hall to talk with her and calm her down. I tried telling her that Mommy has fallen in the potty before. It's no big deal.....it happens! She thought this was kind of funny, and then asked me: "Did you fall in the potty in your prettiest dress?" I said no, I was not really a dress kinda girl. She began to cry again, because then she could claim this as something that had never happened to anyone else. She said: "But I fell in my prettiest dress!" Daddy, still in bed, began to giggle at this and gave her a further excuse to fall apart. We made it to Vacation Bible School only to realize that Maryn was not able to even be in Bryson's class. Thankfully she ran into another school friend and they were able to stay together!

Now on to my heavy heart. Dylan has decided he did not want to attend VBS this year, even after having so much fun there last year. I can tell that he has been questioning this decision. He asks Maryn a lot of questions about what she did during the day. He loves to go with me to drop her off and pick her up so he can ride the trolley and see all the big jumpies in the parking lot. Despite this, he will still not go. I had a talk with him on the way home yesterday trying to find out why. He has been going through a stage of shyness when it comes to being around kids that are older than him. As we walk down the halls of VBS, he will often jump in front of me to avoid being near an older child. He will change sides often depending on how many big kids are on different sides of the hallway. It takes him a while to warm up to a large group and make friends. I am not sure where it is coming from, he has always made friends no matter where we are. I am trying to help him through this prayerfully and just follow God's lead to build his confidence. During our conversation he expressed to me that he did not want to go and make new friends because if he made new friends, he would lose all his old friends: Brooks, Riley, and Ryan. I tried to explain to him that before this year that he didn't even know them and he had to make friends with them too. But, he said he knew that but now they are his friends and he doesn't want any others because he will lose them. He ended our talk with: "That is why I do what I do."

This morning while dropping Maryn off I walked Dylan over to his age group to see if we ran into any of his friends from school and if that would help him want to go. We did in fact run into 4 of his friends and they were all so happy to see him. The volunteers even said I could let him be in that class and talked to Dylan about the cool stuff they were going to be doing today. He didn't want to stay. On the way out he kept asking what I thought that class would be doing. I stopped in the hall and talked with him to see if he would change his mind. I could feel his struggle, but I wanted this to be his decision. He said if Brooks were there he would stay. I tried to explain to him that he was allowing the fact that Brooks was not there to keep him from having fun! I tried to tell him that God gave him such a big heart that there was room for all kinds of friends and not just one. He didn't want to stay. We walked out and he said: "Maybe I will stay tomorrow!" This is breaking my heart because I know he wants to stay, but he is not sure how to allow himself to have fun without thinking he is betraying his other friends.