This evening, my beautiful 3 year old daughter Lily and I made a quick run to Chick-Fil-A for dinner.  She was a pretty good eater, which is surprising because we usually have to work pretty hard to get her to eat like a big girl these days.  Chick-Fil-A has become a bit of a ritual for Lily and I, because they have free meals for kids on Wednesday evenings, and you just can’t beat feeding the 2 of us for less than $6!  Part of our regular Chick-Fil-A routine is to get a balloon for Lily as soon as she is done playing in the Play Place.  So she comes running out of the Play Place and says in a surprisingly loud voice “Daddy, daddy, I want a YELLOW balloon!!!“  She’s usually not specific about the choice of color on the balloon, but this time around she was very clear, she wanted a yellow one!  Lucky for us, there was ONE yellow balloon left - whew!  If there wasn’t a yellow balloon, I would have surely been in trouble with Lily!

We walked out to the car, with the ribbon from the yellow balloon tied around her wrist.  As I lifted her into the car and began to move her toward her seat, the yellow balloon got caught in the doorjamb and disconnected itself from the ribbon.  It floated away… high into the sky.  I began to count down the seconds until she was going to burst into tears…   Alas, she did quite the opposite.  My beautiful little girl, looked right into my eyes and said “It’s ok Daddy, let’s just go get another one.”  That was a sweet response, but what she said next was even better.  “Daddy… don’t worry, I like green better anyway.”  

That made me laugh out loud, but it also made me tear up a little - good tears of course.  I love her attitude, and I think that I can learn a lot from this wise little woman.  She wanted that yellow balloon so badly, and when she watched it get away… she was ok with it, she was content.  She likes green better anyway.  The lesson learned for me is… there are times in my life when I think I want something so bad, so badly that I’ll beg God to make it happen - sometimes He does make it happen, and sometimes, He lets it get away. It’s the times that when my desires are outshined by God’s and I just need to say…”Daddy, don’t worry, I like green better anyway.”

The last thing I’ll say is, as we walked out of Chick-Fil-A with the green balloon in hand.  We saw the little tiny yellow balloon floating high up in the sky.  Lily said…”Daddy, I think that balloon is going up as high as Jesus!”  So sweet!