Because clenched tightly in her tiny, six-year-old fingers is an egg. And on the counter is a half a dozen more that she'd be breaking, hopefully into a bowl.
The last time we'd baked, she had dropped two onto the floor, and the others had left a sticky trail from the carton to the bowl. The stickiness had lasted long after my best efforts to wipe it up.
But still, I give her the space and grace she needs to try again, and watching her jack-o-lantern grin tell me that she needs this more than I need a clean kitchen.
"How many eggs does the recipe say we need?" I ask. I wait for an answer, but get none.
"Mom?" she asks instead.
"What's up?"
She looks down at the egg. "Is there....Is there a baby chick in there I'm eating?"
*********
I can't help it. I grin. The teacher in me loves questions like these, and the mom in me loves her tender heart.
"I'm not sure," I lie, relishing the teaching opportunity.
And I reach for my phone. I start to Google it so I can show her what good research is, but I stop dead in my tracks when I remember the last time I'd used this method.
It'd blown up in my face.
My son, 4 years old, had argued with me that penguins could fly. (Such is my 4 yo's nature. *forced grin*)
To prove they couldn't, I googled "Can penguins fly?" and clicked on the first video that had come up in the search, which happened to be a BBC video, an April 1st prank. They'd used computer animation to make it look like flocks of penguins were flying around Antarctic skies.
"See?" my son had said, sliding off the couch and ignoring my dropped jaw. "Penguins can fly."
"No, Ry," I stuttered. "It was a joke, see? See, not everything you find on the internet is real, and they were joking."
"Penguins fly, Mama," he retorted firmly.
And he left the room.
To this day, he probably thinks that penguins take to the skies. *face palm *
So instead of having something like THAT happen again, I decide to come up with a different way to find the answer she needs.
"How about we call Grammie?" I ask. "She would know."
So we call my mom, who assures my daughter that the eggs hens laid were, in fact, unfertilized, and that we aren't eating babies.
By the end of the phone call, my daughter not only knew the answer to her question, but she had learned that our bodies work that way, too: that girls have eggs inside and we release them and they leave our bodies if something from a boy doesn't fertilize it.
Boom. Egg question answered, and we threw an intro-to-baby-making class in there as well.
And it occurred to me, in that moment, that we depend on Google way too much. We neglect relationships with others and flock to screens, instead.
We seek knowledge in this world more than we seek wisdom.
And often, we probably get it all wrong.
************
I ran a tally this week of how many Google searches I'd done.
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN.
Sure, some of them were necessary, like finding the phone number to the clinic or starting time of my kids' school. But most weren't. Most were impromptu questions based on a fear I'd suddenly had.
And I wondered how many of those Google searches calmed me with truth or fueled my anxiety.
I wondered how many of those Google searches produced outright lies.
I wondered how many missed opportunities I had to call my 96 year old grandpa, my best friends, my mom, or my sisters, when I needed advice.
And I wondered how many times my consultation with Google had replaced an encounter with God.
********
One realization I've had this summer is that every conflict in our lives is an opportunity to lean into the Lord and learn something about Him: His nature, His truth, and His will.
And in this age of Google and endless information available 24/7 at our fingertips, it's easy to neglect the Creator of everything and depend, instead, on the creator of software.
I wonder if we've lost our wisdom with all of this knowledge.
How often do we go to Google when we're afraid or conflicted, or even when we're searching for information?
And how different would our mental health be if we went to God and to loved ones first?
What would happen if we leaned into the Lord instead of leaning into a computer screen?
I heard at an education training that teachers' jobs are harder than ever. They are expected to prepare our students for jobs that don't even exist at the moment.
The person leading the training asked, "So how do we do that? Seems impossible, right?"
And yes, maybe it does...
If you depend on things like technology and Google.
But I think, if I can, I'm going to try to teach my kids to depend on God.
And their Grammie. <3
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