There are a lot of things I promised myself I would do as a parent. Most of the promises I have kept . To breastfeed , to do what is right for my child not what magazines tell me to do, to laugh every day and never to think “I love this child” without saying it sincerely to him. Another promise I made was to always answer his questions as honestly as possible, as sufficiently as I can .. I was not prepared for this one so soon!
I have explained where babies come from ” Mommies and Daddies make them .” Thankfully that was enough for him, for now. I have explained why Cellos are lower than violins ” They are bigger so their sound is lower.” The list is long and only sometimes do I have to google it. Did you know that camels will eat leather if there is no other food available? Leather! That I had to google.
But yesterday I was laying with him, feeling my baby inside wiggle to their older brother’s voice talking about tigers and Chuck E. Cheese ” He’s not a real mouse, just a guy in a suit.”
Then Bam.
“Mommy who is God?”
Immediately I ask him ” Who do you think God is?” but inside I am thinking , how the heck am I going to answer this when I don’t know. I go to church, I sing, I pray and I teach Sunday School but I do not think there is a right , wrong or definitive answer to this question.
” I think god is a woman.”
“God is sorta like a mama, god created the world like I created you.” He’s three so I am putting things in his terms.
“No I think he’s a man.”
“Like an inventor who makes things!” We had just read a Berenstein Bears with an inventor in it. Trying to relate it to his world view.
“Maybe a Lady-Man” This just made me giggle. For weeks whenever my son sees a woman in a traditionally male job like construction, fire fighters and police officers, he calls them “lady mans” . This horrifies me and my very egalitarian beliefs.
The thought of god as a “Lady Man” sorta fits though. If you look at it through my son’s eyes. It’s a woman who is in a traditionally male dominated field. God is traditionally seen as a man, yet in many churches, ours included God is gender neutral and it’s up to us to decide how we conceive the image of the creator.
He dropped his question for now but opened my mind and heart to deciding exactly what I believe, or even if I have to decide.
It’s still easier when I can google it.
