A few weeks ago my son lost his first tooth. The weeks leading up to this momentous occasion were a big jumble of fear and excited anticipation. He reveled in tooth fairy stories, but he also feared the upcoming pain he was sure he was about to experience. He pestered his sister about her experience with loosing teeth. He was sure that it was going to hurt, so as it got closer to falling out, he became afraid to let me look at it. We were at a wedding reception, of all places, when I noticed he wouldn’t open his mouth, (a rare event). I knew it was time to force a look. Turns out that it was hanging upside down by just a thread and my husband was able to gently lift it out. Suddenly all of the anxiety turned to celebration! He basked in the fame of loosing a tooth (“and it didn’t even hurt a bit!”).
The story quickly changed from fear and trepidation to “what is the tooth fairy going to bring me?” Since my nine year old has kind of seen through the tooth fairy story (she still goes along with it, but our tooth fairies have names and she told me that her fairy’s name sounded too much like one I would make up), I was forgetting how real the story still was for Christopher. He’s been obcessed with the tooth fairy story: How did the fairy know which house to go to? How would the fairy carry the money? What happens if the tooth is under something heavy (like a sleeping child)? What do the fairies do with all of the teeth they collect?
For many of his questions he came up with elaborate answers that filled in the tooth fairy lore. It’s fun to see his imagination light up, but I also know there will come a day when this story is no longer real, that it’s not a truth which will last with him into adulthood. Fun now, but not a narrative of substance. It doesn’t matter how he answers his tooth fairy questions because there is no truth to worry about.
Not so true of other narratives in our lives….
Julie and I are preparing to teach a series for the mom’s group at our church based on the book, A Good and Beautiful Life, by James Bryant Smith. I love the format he uses for the three books in his Discipleship series. He unpacks the false, made up narratives that we sometimes fill our lives with, and replaces those stories with the true story that Jesus gives us about who God is and what kind of relationship he wants with us.
Our fictional stories about what we “should” do or how we think God “should” be can sometimes take over and dictate how we live our lives. Much like Christopher’s tooth fairy story, though, we are living by principles that don’t hold up if we start to ask difficult questions and have a desire to know the truth. As I read this book, I look forward to shedding some of my false notions of what it means to be a “Christian Mom”. I don’t want a tooth fairy God that I’ve invented just to meet my expectations. Instead I want to know the real God and live within his narrative for my life.
I invite you to read with us and I would love to hear your stories…