She Said It Was Beautiful

Your daughter said it was beautiful and you told her it was not.

You did not say it like that. You said, oh, it is not really, look at that bit there. Or you said, thank you darling, but it is only a thing I made. Or you laughed and said something about how she has to say that.

She is six. She had looked at it, decided something about it, and told you, and you corrected her.

And she took the correction, because children do. She looked at the bit you pointed at and said oh, and then she went off to do something else, and you carried on with your morning and thought nothing of it for about two days.

I am not going to tell you to accept compliments better, and I am not going to turn this into a lesson about humility, because that would take the good thing straight back. I am going to show you a verse about what comes out of the mouths of small children.

Out of the mouth of babes

There is a line in Psalm 8 about what God has done with the speech of very small children, and the claim in it is remarkably high.

David is looking at the sky and thinking about how large everything is, and in the middle of it he says this.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies. (Psalm 8:2, King James Version)

You were told something true by a small person, and it has never once been an accident when a child says a thing like that. Psalm 8:2 has strength ordained out of the mouths of very young children rather than despite them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table where a finished piece is lying between two people.

Read what it says God did. Ordained strength out of their mouths. Not tolerated their speech. Not found it sweet. Ordained something out of it, which is the language of appointment.

Which means that when something true comes out of a six year old, it is worth more attention than most adults give it, and Scripture says so in a psalm about the size of the universe.

You have a word that was ordained rather than offered, and correcting it has never once been humility. The Spirit of God is the one who makes one line from a psalm about the heavens reach a woman standing over her own work with her daughter beside her, and Psalm 8:2 puts strength in the mouths of the smallest people in the house.

What she learned instead

Let me say what actually happened in those four seconds, because it is not really about the compliment.

She made a judgment and said it out loud, and an adult she trusts told her the judgment was wrong. She will not remember the piece of work. She will remember, in the way children remember things without knowing it, that saying a thing is beautiful is a thing that gets corrected.

You were teaching something without meaning to, and a correction has never once been received as anything else. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her four seconds taught, and the written word has strength ordained out of the mouths of babes in Psalm 8:2.

And there is a second thing. She was also doing something for you. A six year old who tells her mother the thing she made is beautiful is offering something, and you handed it back, and she is too small to know what to do with that.

None of this makes you a bad mother. It makes you a woman who cannot take a compliment, doing it in front of a child, which is the one place where it costs somebody else.

You are able to take one thing from your own daughter, and taking it has never once been vanity. His Spirit is the one who lets a woman receive something small from a small person, and Psalm 8:2 treats the speech of children as a thing God appointed.

Two words and a look

So here is the exercise, and it is two words and about a minute.

Say thank you. Go and find her, and say thank you for what you said about the thing I made. Two words and a sentence, and no correction attached to the end of it.

You are able to say thank you to your own child, and thanking her has never once been self congratulation. Psalm 8:2 has strength ordained out of the mouths of the youngest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes two words possible for a woman who corrected them two days ago.

Then look at it together. Put it on the table and stand and look at it with her for a minute, and let her say whatever she says, and do not point at anything.

Then say out loud that it is good. In front of her, about your own work. She needs to hear a woman say that at least once, because she is learning what a working life sounds like and at the moment it sounds like a correction.

You were never going to be made vain by agreeing with a six year old, and it has never once happened to anybody. The Spirit of God carries two plain words past a reflex thirty years old, and the written word has God ordain strength out of the mouths of babes in Psalm 8:2.