They Stare at Each Other

One of my favorite lines in The Little Mermaid is when Scuttle the seagull is explaining to Ariel that humans used to "Stare at each other all day.  Got very boring."  I sometimes wonder what it looks like to outsiders when we are all staring at screens all day.  Pretty boring, I imagine.

Today, Emmy has been staring at an iPad screen for over an hour.  She is absolutely taken with this game called Monster Petshop.  Emmy is only four.  She has almost no concept of time.  When she asks me how long something is, I tell her, "It's five spongebob shows."  Or something like that.  Otherwise my answer means almost nothing to her.  Well, on this monster petshop game, you have a shop that sells various monsters.  In order to get them, you buy or make eggs, and then to go select an egg to incubate.  Emmy doesn't know how to get an egg started, so she will ask me or her dad to do it.  Then she will sit and stare at it until it starts to "wiggle" so she knows to hatch it.  The egg has a timer above it that tells you how long it has.  Some eggs only incubate for an hour.  Others for four hours, or even twelve.

She sat and stared (despite my repeated suggestions that she turn it off and come back) at the game for an hour while her egg incubated, asking me at intervals how much longer it would be.  Finally, the hour long incubation ended and the anticipated egg hatched!  She was giddy, and didn't complain a bit.  Of course, the second egg I incubated for her has a 4 hour incubation period.  She is still staring at it, lovingly, and asking me how much longer it will be every five minutes or so.  It's a little annoying, but she's so patient and happy about it.  (I won't address how much the music from this game is beginning to annoy me. Ha!)

It has come to my attention that we are much like a child with a game we don't understand, but on a slightly larger scale.  A few weeks ago, I was only a month and a half pregnant.  I was feeling fine and working out every day.  Then one day, I started bleeding.  The time I had bled before, I lost the baby.  So I panicked.  I had a baby shower to go to that day, and after sobbing in a fetal position about the bleeding and what I figured was a miscarriage for a few hours, I got myself together and went to a baby shower to coo about the upcoming children my cousin would have.  That entire time, the bleeding continued, and I felt so much sadness for this little baby I hadn't even known I'd have for very long.

I fretted, I worried, I panicked, I sorrowed.  I could not look away from the egg that was incubating. I just sat, staring at it.  Then I arrived home from the shower.  I said a little prayer before going back inside, and sitting in my car, I felt the Spirit of God so strongly I began to cry, but this time with joy instead of fear.  The Holy Ghost told me that it would be okay.  The baby would be alright.  Everything was fine.  A great peace took hold of my heart that day, and to this day, weeks and weeks later, I can still feel that peace.  I knew then that a loving Heavenly Father would tell us, "It's okay to look away from the screen.  All will be well."

I also know that sometimes, all is not well.  Sometimes a bleed means a miscarriage.  Sometimes we really are sick and God won't take away our pain, but He will still be there to give us peace and speak to our souls.  It must be annoying to have us incessantly asking how much longer, when He knows we can't understand His full answer, but He will still tell us we can look away from the screen.  He will remind us to go on living our lives, and not let this one thing take over.  Currently I'm in the middle of being sick from the pregnancy, the baby that was in fact fine.  I have been sick for a long time now, and I don't know how long it will last.  My inclination is again, to stare at that egg.  To obsess over it.  To fret, and worry, and sorrow about my life right now.  A loving Heavenly Father is there to remind me, to look away from the screen.

I guess my inspiration today was that we all need to look away from the things that we can't change right now.  Try to live your life with peace and joy, and if you ask, God will help you with that.  He will tend to the things you can't change, the things that take an inexplicable amount of time, if you will let Him.  He can see and make sense of that little timer, the one we don't yet comprehend.  If you place your faith in Him, He will help you gain perspective and find the joy in the things around you that are ready and that can fulfill you now, instead of worrying over things you can't change.