Let’s Pretend

Roar !

Growl !

Woof woof !

Howl !

Scream !

I was glad that our house is as well insulated as it is. Not just to keep the cold out and keep the heat in, but also to help with the soundproofing. Otherwise a neighbor might be tempted to call 911 about the terrifying noises next door.

Roar !!

Scream !!

Uproarious laughter!!

We were playing one of Ethan’s favorite games, “Let’s pretend…” “Let’s pretend we are raccoons, Grandma…” “Let’s pretend we are sharks, Grandma…”

On the way to our house he asked if we could pretend that we were all adults and talk like we were adults. Bill and I barely suppressed our laughter as we agreed to this request.

Now we were down in the basement pretending that we were dogs (specifically Teddy and Mia, imagined after Aunt Deb’s dogs) and the dogcatcher was chasing us.

For awhile we were running all over the basement while the dog catcher (Grandma) was trying to catch Teddy (Ethan) in a net (a sheet). When she was able to catch Teddy she was supposed to throw him into a cage (a swivel rocker) and lock him in place (with the sheet tucked over and around him). The problem was that Teddy kept escaping and the dogcatcher could only keep up that pace for a short time.

When Teddy realized that the dog catcher had run out of energy (although he still abounded with the stuff – why can we bottle and sell it???) she was allowed to stand in one place in a matador stance while Teddy charged and ran past the outstretched sheet.

We were having an uproarious (literally) time and were only willing to slow down when the dog catcher suggested we go upstairs for a snack of fruit to refuel our energy.

Later in the weekend we were playing some other pretend game which also involved Grandpa and making noises. At one point Grandpa turned to me and whispered, “I didn’t even know I could make those noises.” Bill was too busy trying to go to school and teach at the same time when the girls were Ethan’s age so he missed most of this fun earlier. He is making up for lost time now with his grandson.

Child psychologists would tell us that “Let’s Pretend” is a child’s way of practicing; trying out what is like to behave as an adult. Perhaps it is practice, but they sure have fun doing it and they love it when we play the game with them.

I suppose that these same psychologists would say that this also allows the child to be in charge of the adults. And that is certainly true. Ethan loves it best when he is in charge, when he is telling us how the game is to be played, even if those rules change frequently throughout the game.

The game is only really fun if we participate. Children can certainly pretend on their own. They can easily pretend with other children. I remember the hours my sister and I played “dress-ups” when we were kids. But kids seem to thoroughly relish when adults pretend with them, when adults enter their pretend world.

This weekend Ethan was having fun because Grandma and Grandpa, and later in the weekend, Aunt Deb, were coming down to his level. We were entering his world and playing in his game.

In some ways, for us adults, playing “Let’s Pretend” was exhausting. It also meant, for a brief time, we were setting aside our adultness and becoming like Ethan. It meant shedding some of our inhibitions and making strange noises, running around the basement, waving our arms and sometimes collapsing on the floor (or when we could get away with it, the futon) not like an adult, but like a child.

Is this perhaps, a bit what it was like for Christ, as a part of the trinity of God Himself, to become one of us? To set aside his godness and become human? How limiting must it have been to “run” around as a human, to limit his language to ours, to diminish all of his creative energy to move solely in the realm of the created ones?

Unlike my time with Ethan, Jesus becoming man was not a game, it was deadly serious. But like my time with Ethan, he chose to do it. He did not have to become a man. God surly could have found another way to redeem us. When Jesus chose to become a human, he limited himself to our level, that he might enter our experience, that he might relate to us on our level, in order that we might move toward his level.

Ethan will not fully appreciate “the sacrifice” adults make to become a child like him until he is an adult and his own joints are growing stiff and his own sense of what is appropriate, mature adult behavior has developed. Hopefully he will remember and hopefully it will encourage him to do the same with his kids and grandkids.

I know I don’t begin to appreciate what Christ has done for us, but after this weekend I have a little better idea of what it means to limit oneself. I am struck anew with the wonder that God Himself became human for me.