My Greatest Guru…besides God that is…

Guru, is by definition: A spiritual teacher.  

And boy, do I have a good one.  She is tolerant of my faults.  Slow to anger, and patient with me most of the time.  She speaks slowly and doesn’t use big words, yet she teaches me quite a lot.

She is loving in so many ways, some of them very hard to see as love.

She expects a lot of me.  She demands my attention.  She has shown me things I have never known. Taught me things about myself I never expected to learn.  And some of her lessons have been the hardest lessons in my life.

Without bowing to her, I have great respect for her.  My greatest guru, my spiritual teacher is my daughter.

With one utterance, she makes me leap like a flying squirrel to her attention.

With one glance, I stop the world.

With one smile, I crumble like a gluten-free cookie.

My daughter is my greatest guru. What are her spiritual teachings?

These are just a few of her iconic lessons:

• Stop everything and pause once in a while for playtime.
• Be patient when others are learning a new trait, and avoid trying to help them.
• Falling is the way we learn to get back up on our own.
• Sleep is one of the best forms of medicine. For me and for baby.
• Cuddling is also a form of medicine.
• Theories are just that. A theory, and do not work for everyone.
• Different people have different needs, different exceptations, and different outcomes.  No one size fits all.
• Learning doesn’t happen with tools, it happens with life and time.
• Coffee is also medicine, when my guru gets up a bit too early.
• The best way to stay on track with your health, is to know that you are an example to someone else.
• Love comes in very small packages, and very tiny kisses.
• Love also comes in the 985th cry for “Mommy” of the day, even if it makes me want to pull my hair out.
• All work and no imagination makes for a dull mommy.
• There is more love for my husband when watching him as a daddy then I ever thought possible.
• Date night’s are necessary and are also medicine.
• Sometimes all you need is a little song and dance to turn a day around.
• Watching the amazement of a snowflake through the eyes of someone who has never seen one, is a whole new fascination and appreciation for the snowflake itself.
• Teaching manners helps one learn better manners themselves.

And I could go on. Bottom line is, I have taught her to count to 3, to take a deep breath when she is fussy, and to say please and thank you at only 15 months of age, but in that time she has taught me so much more.  She has taught me how glorious to be her mother, and yet how challenging it is as well. These life lessons are some of the most joyous I have felt, and yet being covered in puke and trying to keep your calm is much more daunting than any college course or  10 day meditation retreat could teach me.

Children can be our greatest spiritual experiences and our greatest spiritual teachers…if we allow them to, rather than see them as frustrating nuances that seemingly take from us rather than give.  They have a weird way of giving, but it’s also a very important way that shows us things about ourselves we have never seen until we see them in front of tiny eyes. Take time today to recognize this in your children.  Viewing them as teachers rather than needy little people opens up a vast world of learning for you both.  And makes parenting a little more adventurous…even when puke is involved.