Kids & Parenting

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“God Hasn’t Given Me a Daddy Yet”
The Big Faith of a Little Word

by
Autumn J. Conley

It was one of those days when there doesn’t seem to be enough time to accomplish everything that needs to be done in the time you have. My four-year-old daughter, Cissy, and I had been running around all morning feverishly trying to get everything we needed to transform my little bug-and-mudpuddle loving child into a princess worthy of fairy tale fame. It all had to be done by noon that day because, at that precise hour, my little tomboy princess would be making her grand debut as the flower girl in the wedding of one of her Sunday School teachers. I was most honored that Nikki and Tom had asked my daughter to play this role in their special day, but by the time we got to the beauty parlor for the updo on her hair, I most welcomed the chance to sit down and relax a bit while Lori, a very brave and patient beautician, began to take on the challenge of making something particularly elegant out of that typically flyaway little pig-tailed head of my daughter’s.
As I sat glancing nonchalantly through a magazine, occasionally lending the instinctive mother’s ear and eye to what was going on with my daughter, I heard something amidst a conversation between the beautician and Cissy that made me feel proud of my daughter and ashamed of myself all at once.
Lori was nearly finished with Cissy’s hair, and as she applied the final ten coats of industrial strength not-even-a-monsoon-could-move-this-hairdo hairspray to my little girl’s beautiful updo, she unknowingly asked Cissy, “What does your daddy say when you come home looking this pretty?”
As a single mom, there are those regretful moments when you get a sick guilt-feeling knowing that your child is suffering some distress because of your foolish behavior and poor decisions in the past. For me, this was one of those moments. I nearly had to grit my teeth as I waited to see how Cissy would answer – after all, she had never had a daddy and certainly didn’t have one at home to admire her hairdo. She sat there for a second looking so elegant and so childish all at once, glanced at Lori with all the thoughtfulness a four-year-old can muster, and said smugly “God hasn’t given me a daddy yet.”
The one word in Cissy’s answer that caught my ear the most was a small word with a big meaning – she said “yet.” In that small answer, my daughter illustrated a great deal of faith, and the certainty and contentment in her little shrill four-year-old voice was a true testimony of her faith in a God that loves her and provides for her needs when He sees fit to do so.
Perhaps we can all take a lesson from the naïve faithfulness of the word “yet.” We can find it throughout the scriptures and spoken often by Jesus himself as an indication of something that is certain to happen eventually. In John Chapter 7, the story prior to the crucifixion and resurrection is recanted to us as Jesus tells his friends and acquaintances that his hour “is not yet come” and He “was not yet glorified.” In John 20, we read that He was “not yet ascended” to his Father. And, in Revelation 8:13, we hear of trumpets “which are yet to sound.” We should know with an unfailing faithful certainty that what God tells us is “yet to come” either did happen as promised or will happen when He deems the time is right. Maybe, just maybe, if we could attach a “yet” to our so-far-unanswered prayers just like my daughter and so many small children do, we could live happier knowing that all of our “yets” are in the Lord’s hands after all. And, just like the reliant faith of a child, we should be content to leave them there.
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