A Lesson in Animal Crackers

Ava got frustrated today. She was sitting amid two packages of animal crackers that had been spilled by her siblings (and not cleaned up) during our reading time. The older kids were off to something else, and when she saw the fallen treasure, she stiff-walked herself on over to the pile with all the speed a one-year-old can muster. She plopped herself down and began to gather. And she started getting frustrated. There were so many animal crackers littered around her, but she kept running into the same problem: her little hands were just too small to hold them all. She kept cramming them into each little fist, and everytime she picked up a new one, another one seemed to slip out. Her pudgy fingers could only hold two or three, but with determination, she wanted possession of them all. And the more she struggled to cram, the more frustrated and fussy she became.

At the risk of sounding too analytical, I thought that this image was a perfect picture of myself in life all too often. There are so many "good things" scattered around me that I could pick up--relationships, committments, possessions, opportunities, jobs, etc.--so I try to cram as many as possible into my little hands. I race from here to there, doing too much, committed to too much, but still I strain to not let even one animal cracker fall to the ground. And it leaves me frustrated. My quest for everything robs me of enjoying the two or three crackers I am able to hold in my hand comfortably. We live in a society that values bigger and better and more, but I think sometimes that race leaves my family and I just . . . hurried, frazzled, frustrated. I am learning that I would rather do a few things well, than a million things poorly. The challenge for me comes in recognizing my limitations, embracing those, and letting those other animal crackers--while still good in and of themselves--just sit there on the floor.