Suitcase of Knowledge

I loved the story that Corrie Ten Boom told about some knowledge being too heavy for a child. She had asked her father ‘what is sex sin?’ He had asked her to try to pick up his suitcase. She tried, but the suitcase was filled with watches and tools and the little girl could not lift it. Her father told her it was the same way with knowledge, that some knowledge is too heavy for a child, and, until she was older and stronger, she would just have to let her father carry that knowledge.

Corrie Ten Boom was an incredible person. She wrote “The Hiding Place” a book about her family helping hide Jews from the Nazis, her involvement with the Dutch underground and her capture and imprisonment in a concentration camp. She is someone I have admired and I would listen to her advice.

My grandchildren are beginning to interact with other children via social media and chats. It surprises me that children can be so cruel, and how much you can hurt a child with a careless word. I have a new goal to try to encourage my grandchildren to believe in themselves more and to care less about what others think. I know their parents are doing an outstanding job of raising them, but I also want to be a voice echoing those encouragements. And doling out lots of love, too.

Children get to a certain age, and then they are just pacing their cages, waiting for the freedoms they believe will come when they get a little older. If only childhood could be savored and not thought of as a time to rush through. George Bernard Shaw is credited with the saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.” It is a true statement. But it is also true that more and more, young people are navigating issues that they shouldn’t have to until they are older and stronger and better able to ‘carry that suitcase.’

1. she wasn’t big enough to carry it
2. now I have a new goal
3. pacing my cage