This is such a funny age

Abby's a Daddy's girl, BIG time. Tonight happened to be Ben's night to give her a bath and put her down to bed (we alternate). Ergo, she was in a great mood.

As Ben was backing out of the room, I heard a variety of little girl giggles including "Good night, sleep tight" repeatedly interspersed with a litany of things she loves. It ran something like this "Abby loves zoos, Mommy, Unca Joe, Mommy, butterflies, Daddy, zoos..." So that was funny.

Then, she kept chattering to herself after Ben finally shut the door, and since her room is right by the living room, we could hear it all. And the best part was this particularly funny exchange.

Abby singing a nursery rhyme.
*thump*
Abby: "Oww, that hurts. I hit my head." (in a silly, giggly sort of way)
Ben: If she hit her head, that means that she's not tucked in anymore.
Abby: Daddy, tuck my feet in! Daddy, tuck my feet in!!
Daddy walks into the room to re-tuck the little munchkin.
Abby: "I have poopy diaper."
Daddy: "This is what you needed to do in the potty before you laid down..."
(a few minutes later...)
Abby: "Tuck in Abby's feet! I tuck in Abby's feeeet!!" (Her pronouns are hit and miss. She still insists that the proper way to ask to be picked up is "Pick you up!" And often when she wants to sit on your lap, she'll repeatedly insist "Sit on my lap.")
Ben goes in to re-tuck one last time.
Abby: "I see Daddy's feet!"

Back to singing to herself. Her current favorite hits medley alternates between "Tinkle, Tinkle Little Star" (which I find wildly funny when she sings it while sitting on the potty) and the ABC song.

Oh wait, as I type this, she's reverted to another favorite stand-by. "Where'd Abby go?" She probably has a blanket on her head. (Which reminds me, and I'm apparently in a rambling mood, Abby likes to play hide-and-seek, and sometimes mixes it up and "hides" her favorite stuffed kitty, though always in the same spot. It's pretty easy to distract her and then re-hide kitty. So funny when she comes back to where she thinks her kitty is hiding, sure that you'll never find the toy, only to discover that her kitty is truly hiding. Where'd kitty go??)

Service

***This is the 13^th entry in my This I Believe series.***

Well, it’s been months since I’ve last contributed to my goal of completing my own This I Believe series that I began last fall with my Composition kids. I’m finishing these last couple, whether anyone reads them or not!

I know what I want to believe about service, what I feel that I inherently do believe about service, but I’m the first to admit that I am not absolute in my devotion to carving out the time necessary to make this a habit in my life. There’s always more that I, we, you can do to serve others. My belief that service is right, good, necessary all stem from my faith, but I don’t believe that it has to be. To me, it’s a bit nebulous because “we” want to stereotype that as something that “good people” do, and “good people” are those who are “religious” or “go to church” or what have you. But certainly, one can fail to fulfill their need to attend organized church and still succeed in a deep understanding of what service is to one another.

I know that service makes me feel good, but about what? Myself? My world? My community? Do I feel good because I realize anew all that I have to be thankful for? Do I feel good because there’s no greater commitment to humanity than to serve others above ourselves? I like to think that the latter is the pivotal reason why people continue to serve each other. I’m always going to play the optimist because as far as I have seen, witnessed or experienced in my few, cognizant years, people always step up and help when the rough things happen. Not only that, but who hasn’t witnessed someone perform a simple act of kindness for a random stranger for no apparent reason?

I believe that such simple acts of kindness are a necessary act of service if we are to communicate and live together as a unified society, whether that is city, state, country, or world. We must help each other out. We must. It’s that simple. I believe that to be true, fundamentally and wholeheartedly. I feel this way about service much as I do about my faith—it just is, it just must be so.

I believe that there is a variety of services that we must perform, not only to ourselves but also to our world (which, really, all comes back to serving ourselves also). If we want to live in community, we have to include service to this phenomenal world that God has given us to take care of. We are stewards of the Earth just as much as we called to serve each other.

I believe in the ideology of being a servant. We sang this hymn at our wedding, and the words are just as applicable here: “Will you let me be your servant/let me be as Christ to you?/Pray that I might have the grace/to let me your servant, too.” There’s a pretty heavy message in this simple Brethren hymn; can we not only serve each other but allow others to serve us, too?