Learning to Walk

It seemed to come from out of nowhere. Before dinnertime on Thursday, Z would stand in place holding toys and my cell phone. But, if she decided she wanted to get anywhere, she would drop down on her right knee and trust her signature move, a little modified monkey crawl, to get her wherever she wanted to go. She’s quite the scooter too. It’s hard at times to keep up with her, much less think far enough ahead of her to make sure a room is “Z friendly.”

But something happened during dinner. I’m not sure what it was exactly. I guess it could have been the split pea soup. Those mighty little legumes are packed with fiber, protein, and some B-vitamins, a perfect food for physical performance. It might have been the Cornbread, sweetened with a just hint of maple syrup to jumpstart the motor. Maybe it was the rice milk, a surefire way to… nah, it wasn’t the rice milk.

I’m not sure exactly what happened in those 25 minutes at the table, but as soon as she had successfully eaten and cleaned off her tray in neat little split pea piles on the floor, something changed. Our little monkey crawler became a walker. Momma shared our joy with the Facebook world, “And...she...walks!!! Just like that. Before dinner, crawling. After dinner, walking! 14 months to the day!”

M, momma, and I spent the next 20 minutes in a living room triangle, coaxing her to walk back and forth between us, while the camera flash popped and the camcorder captured the newly crowned toddler toddling.

She had her share of stops and starts. We aren’t talking red carpet gracefulness here. She would take a couple of steps, stop to teeter a bit, and then get moving again. She would get excited and let her head lean a bit too far forward. And when her noggin gets in front of her little feet, let’s just say inertia works! The best moment for us as parents was watching Z walk with reckless abandon into M’s arms as they both giggled and rolled to the floor. That was priceless.

The reality is that, while this transformation from crawler to walker seemed spontaneous to us, Z had built up to this moment. She’d trained for it. She’d cultivated the ability to walk. She prepared her body and her little legs for months, testing her balance, developing strength, and learning the basics of the movements. She prepared her mind, learning to have faith in herself. She moved from lying helplessly on the ground, to rolling, to sitting, to scooting, to crawling, to cruising, and now to walking. It happened “just like that,” but it was also a long time coming.

Life in God is a lot like that. Life with God is about walking in the Spirit. It’s not passive; it’s active. It’s not static; it’s dynamic. We don’t just start walking, but we build up to it. We grow to trust the Spirit, others, and ourselves. We rely on the support and encouragement of others who’ve been down this path before. We learn to walk.

This is one of the reasons that it is vital for Christians to practice the spiritual disciplines. The disciplines are not about earning our salvation, but about embracing it. They do not help us earn God’s favor, but to trust it. Just as Z nurtured her whole self to embrace that moment of walking, the spiritual disciplines are about learning to walk. They open our lives to God, so that we can learn to walk in cadence with the Spirit. They open our lives to one another, so we can be drawn together into the fellowship of the Trinity. They open our lives to the world, so that we can participate in the fullness of God’s salvation. The disciplines help us cultivate new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in the world. They help us to learn to walk in the steps of the one who said, “Follow me.”

At one point as Z toddled her way around the living room on Thursday, M looked at us and said, “So I guess she’ll be doing this the rest of her life.” Yes, big sis. Yes, she will. And I pray that we will all keep learning to walk too.