The Stroller
Caleb won’t stop pushing Bailey’s pink and purple stroller around the house. He’s only one, but it bugs me. Not that he’s pushing a “girl’s toy” but that now at 14 months, 16 days, he still will not walk by himself. It’s not that he can’t but rather he won’t. Today while pushing the stroller around the house he got it stuck under the coffee table and stuck on a shoe (something he could have walked over). He can stand, he can walk. He even has the strength and balance to to lift the stroller off the ground and turn it around. He doesn’t need the stroller! But, he won’t let it go, even when I pick him up, he’ll lift it into the air – holding on for comfort. He thinks he needs the stroller to walk, but it only holds him back. It gets stuck on everything. A pink stroller is what is stopping him from walking!
My son is not alone, my daughter didn’t want to walk without the safety of holding our hands. Even adults don’t want to let go. How often do we hold onto things that bump into life, knock things over, hold us back? Children hold on to their parents faith, even when it comes broken, saddled with racism, or hatred. People hold on to ministers as a substitute for a relationship with Christ and when they leave their faith fails. Many hold on to perfectionism as an excuse for not trying. If we can’t be perfect in our faith, let’s just stop trying, at least for today.
We walk around our life with strollers, out of place, awkward, but at least we feel secure. We have addictions, habits, grudges we nurse, judgment we pass all so we can escape our own inability to walk alone. How much hurt we cause when we run others over, how much slower we go getting stuck all along the way?!?
Your stroller, Caleb’s stroller, my stroller, all as absurd as the other. All holding us back, all keeping us from walking the way we were meant to walk. Hebrews 12:1 says, “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” Let us put the stroller down and start to walk away…even if its slowly.-
-
