A Little Mommy Pride

I'm in the kitchen getting lunch together the other day while my two favorite preschoolers are in the dining room playing "Going to Africa in Noah's Ark" under the very large dining room table covered in blankets of all varieties.  Pretty normal occurrence in our house.  And I hear my Princess Lou tell her brother, "Mr. Sir, guess what?  My teacher told me I could be Mary."

That part isn't quite a normal experience in our house.  The conversation was not directed to me, but upon overhearing it, I'm not gonna lie that my heart skipped a little beat.  Or two.  I headed straight for the ark that might have been floating somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for all I knew to verify that I had just heard the story correctly.

"Princess, did I just hear you right?  Are you going to be Mary in the Christmas program this year?"

"Well, my teacher said I could."

This was followed by a long series of questions from me to investigate whether this was accurate information, or if my sweet, innocent, sometimes confused 5 year old had maybe misinterpreted the conversation with her teacher.  For all I can tell, she's got her facts straight.

I think I am more excited about this than she is!  Don't get me wrong; she's thrilled.  As evidenced by the fact that she deemed it worthy enough to report to her brother.  But I think I might be embarrassingly excited about this monumental event.  I mean, this is a big deal.  Mary is the coveted, sought after, main part in the Christmas play.  Only someone highly deserving gets such an important role.  I'm pretty sure it would have been enough glory to ride out an entire year for me if I would have ever had such an honor.  I don't think she gets it.

Or maybe...more likely...I don't get it.  As I'm discovering happens more frequently than I care to admit, maybe my 5 year old does have a better perspective than me.  She's excited.  Which is good.  But maybe instead of being so excited for Princess Lou, I should step back and shift my focus to what the story represents, God incarnate, here on earth, in the form of a babe.  WOW!!!  Maybe who gets to reenact the play 2000 years later isn't quite as important as the original nativity story.  And maybe it's possible that my 5 year old understands that better than I do!

But that's not gonna stop me from being just a little bit proud.  Or maybe I'll be absolutely humbled on the day of the program to learn that my sweet princess was more confused than I thought and ends up in a generic angel costume once again.