If the children had awakened as Smurfs this morning, I couldn’t have been more shocked. They are indeed still human, still pale, and still have full heads of hair — but to my great shock, Day 1 of Daylight Stealings Time was a flawlessly, perfectly perfect slice of perfection. Actually, I think the Smurf thing would have shocked me less.

I’ve been a parent for almost 10 years. This is my 9th Daylight Stealings transition as a parent. And this is the first one that didn’t embody the spittings of a grumpy dragon. They awakened happily on their own before 7:30 DST, we were early to church, they sat like angels through a long sermon, they ate their lunches like hungry street urchins, they helped rake and bag 8 bags of leaves from the front yard this afternoon (I can’t even go into the details of how well this one went…I’ll pass out), and sat through evening church as angelic as they had in the morning. No crying. No complaining. All day long.

I have two theories on the day:

• Either my Daylight Stealings Transition Planning document is finally tweaked to efficiency and effectiveness,
  OR
• I’m going to look up carefully as I walk out the front door tomorrow morning to avoid being beaned in the head by the dropping of the other shoe.

Until next November, may your memories, and mine, of that lost hour sweetly sustain us. Carry on.

A few minutes ago, while I was sitting on my rumpus relaxing, I heard a very small knock at the front door. This was a sound definitely made by a small set of knuckles. I went to the door, opened it, and looked down. Standing there at my stoop was my tiny 4-yr-old daughter. She had been playing in the front yard. As I stood there, she beamed at me, stretched out her arm, and said, “A presentation for you that is a present.”

Ah. A presentation that is a present. I looked to see what was pressed in her palm. It was a stack of green leaves from our Ligustrum tree. She had picked 7 leaves from my own tree and brought them to me.

I beamed back at her, bent down to take the leaves and hug her, and said. “Oh, thank you so much! This is wonderful.” And then I went to set the leaves down in the kitchen window sill and went back to what I was doing. Those were already my leaves. I didn’t need leaves. And yet, it was a very sweet thing that made me happy. She had brought me a love gift.

As I set those leaves down, I immediately thought about my pitiful attempts to bring my own “gifts” to God. Everything I can give Him is already His. Most of my gifts are weak and tiny. And yet, He wants me to come to Him. He wants us to offer Him our pathetic little offerings from the largest parts of our hearts.
I thought about this verse:

Acts 17:25-28
²⁵ Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. ²⁶ And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, ²⁷ so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; ²⁸ for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

He doesn’t need anything from me, but because I am His child, He wants the sorry stack of leaves from the tree that was His already. So I need to keep bringing them to Him. Thank you, Beloved, for reminding me of this today.