Meet LaNatie.
He has truly stolen my heart. Everything about him. I have never seen a little boy glow as much as this one does. He knows who Jesus is.. Let me just tell you how I know.
Everyday the kids have break. These kids just run outside and they run and play and everything else. BUT since LaNatie is in a wheelchair, he doesn’t get that privilege. The teacher aid just pushes him outside and he just has to sit there until it is over. To him, that is break. To him just being outside is enough. Well, that all changed one day.
Me and Kacey were outside with our kids watching them and noticed that he was just sitting there and we just looked at each other and just knew what we needed to do. So I got him and pushed him to the swings. As I held the swing, Kacey placed him carefully inside the swing, and you thought we had changed his life. He hooped, hollered, squealed, and just BURST at the seams with a huge smile and nothing but joy coming off of him. I could not help but just start to tear up and laugh uncontrollably because he filled me with so much joy. The bell rang so we got him back in his wheelchair and I pushed him back to class and leaned down to ask him,
“LaNatie, did you love the swing?”
His honest response was,
“What is HIS name?”
I said,
“My name is Cherub.”
He replied,
“NO, Not you, HIM?
As he said that he was pointing to my cross on my necklace that happened to just be on my heart right then.
I said,
“ Buddy, that’s Jesus. “
His whole face just beamed with that beautiful smile right then and said,
“Jesus…..RAINBOWS.”
He KNOWS who Jesus is. I didn’t have to tell him.
Another day with him…..
The kids have P.E (physical education) on Fridays. Well once again… he can’t do anything they ask of the children. On this day, they asked them to run forward, back, side, side, and to skip all when he blew the whistle. Once he blew the whistle you had to go to the opposite direction. Well I was NOT about to let him sit and watch the kids have all the fun. So I just laid my tiredness down and let Jesus just energize me up so that he can truly experience P.E. So we did. Once again he screamed, yelled, laughed, just had a jolly ol’ time. His favorite part was when we skipped. I just took his chair up and leaned it back and bounced him to the end and back and kept on doing it. When it was over….we had the SAME conversation. He KNOWS Jesus. He SEES Jesus. But most importantly, He shows ME Jesus.
One more…
That same Friday, he wanted to swing again. So I rolled him over there but there were boys who would not give their swing up. So I stood there for a minute and waited. They never got off. So he looked at me and said,
“ I want to slide."
My mind went,
Wait what? How am I going to lift him up over this rail and on to that slide?
So I grabbed Krista and we rolled him over. We looked at each other and just said,
“ JESUS”
We then proceeded to take him out and just got him up there. It was so awesome. I ran around and placed him upon the slide and there went that pure joy coming out of his mouth. He never had been down the slide until then, so he wanted to do it again. You better believe we put him on that again with as much fun as he was having.
Its just the little things. It’s the little things that matter. Nothing big. You don’t have to do something spectacular to show someone how you love them. Just do. Just love, they will notice it whether they tell you or not. He did, and so did I.
