confusion about true north

Child sounds wrong, it doesn't fit correctly. Children don’t gleam like her, nor do they seem to rise above in the same way. Celestial seems a fitting description. She rests out of reach from human corruption, the many trials fail to damper her glowing grin, she illuminates hope amidst great darkness. Regardless of how small she may be the light she lets off radiates a powerful heavenly beauty. Child won’t do, Zetwal suits her better.

Her tiny foot glides over the radio flyer sticker, leaving all her toes dangling eight inches up on one side of the trike. A moment of hesitation and she jumps down with determination. Two foot nothing and hardly twenty pounds this gleaming Zetwal hits the ground running, legs kicking uncoordinated, drooped tongue tops a gaping smile to form a more dazzling picture than the constellations. Her glistening eyes are suspended ahead on a girl rocking strenuously atop a trike, urging it to progress. That wobbly sprint doesn’t break until that bright Zetwal all but collides into the other toddler. Suddenly the face of the girl mounted upon the trike turns, thrill replaces frustration as she gains momentum! Behind her dashes that shooting Zetwal, head between outstretched arms, calves pumping, hands on her friends back. My Zetwal, the tiny, seemingly helpless, two year old girl propels a child nearly twice her weight forward with more pride than she can contain.

Your heart could melt when she asks you to pick one flower after another for her to pass to every child on the play set. It would tug at you even more to see how she was nearly left in tears simply because she couldn’t find a flour for both her big sisters. Never could I have had the strength to give like this radiant Zetwal had I received as little as she, her giving doesn’t cease, not even when it comes with a cost. 

I remember restraining myself from leaping to her defense one day when a child stole her swing. Recalling her face as she weighed her options and reacted still leaves me in disbelief. I can see Christ turning his cheek to receive the back swing from another Roman soldier when I picture my Zetwal’s tiny fingers untwine that Hibiscus from her hair and outstretch her hand to the child sitting in her swing. A pride bubbles from in me and breaks free as a giant grin simply at envisioning this girl’s smile somehow grow even grander and luminescent when that flower transferred from her hand to the other toddlers. 

In her two years of life, two years more trying than anything I experienced in my nineteen, she has grasped an understanding of God’s unconditional love far better than I. I struggle to love even those the most deserving in my life. I get caught up in the routine, the small trial of the moment and miss opportunities to serve those in greater need. I become angry, I fail to offer forgiveness, fail to follow the example of my Savior. I pray that I can be more like this toddler, whose life offers more true direction than even the North Zetwal. I pray that everyday I will learn to love as sacrificially and unconditionally as Astride, my gleaming star.