Having the faith of a child!

By Gavin C. Lewis

When my family and I evacuated for Hurricane Ida, I really had no expectations on when we would return. I made the same mistake I did during my Hurricane Katrina evacuation – I only packed three outfits, two pair of shoes, forgot a few items and shrugged it off like we would be back in a day or two. The kids however, were packed as if they were going on vacation with sunscreen, swimsuits, toys, sunglasses, dolls, blankets, snacks, etc.

In my mind, I believed that we were coming right back; in their minds, it was vacation time. No matter how much I said to them, “This is not a vacation, this storm could be serious,” they just shrugged it off as if it didn’t bother them. I could not figure out why they just didn’t get it.

Then, once we arrived at our destination, they just HAD to do something every day or it was the end of the world. I would tell them, every day, how serious this could be, and we even watched the news so that they could see the damage Ida had caused. While they were sad that people had lost everything and some even lost their lives, they still moved on as if everything was going to be ok.

Frustrated I asked, why don’t you all care about what’s happening? One of my daughters calmly said you always tell us to pray and have faith that God will take care of us. So, why should we be worried?

In that moment, I felt about an inch tall. I began to think about how children process and think about things much differently than we as adults do. When we worry, often they don’t, because they have faith in God and they also have faith in us, as their parents, that we will make everything ok.

We teach our kids and talk to them about faith, and yet when it’s time to show how strong our faith is, often times they are better at it than us.