The Preceptions of a 3-year old

The other day, my daughter turns to me while I am doing a mundane task like laundry, and says, "Mommy, if you get dead, then I won't have a mommy anymore." I nearly dropped what I was doing, and just turned to her and asked her to repeat herself. So she said it again. So I asked her, "Who told you that?" And she said, "I made it up myself." And I thought to myself, "Well, its a pretty accurate statement."

What do you do in situations like this? I don't want to lie to her, and tell her I'll always be around. While that is my hope and prayer - to watch her grow up, and be a part of her life always - we all know that at the end of the day, that decision only lies in the hands of Allah.

Its amazing how children are often the ones to remind us of who we belong to and how we only have limited control. We usually are so caught up in planning our lives for the future, working toward our careers, planning our families, etc, that we tend not to think about the possibility of our plan being different from Allah's. But more often than not, our plan is different than Allah's. Or rather, how certain circumstances turn out may not have been at all how we imagined it would be. And its how we respond to that plan that is the test. When His plan for us is even better than we could have imagined, being grateful is key. When His plan is different than what we planned, and outwardly may seem horrifying, remembering that there is a wisdom in it is essential. Finding that wisdom is often beyond our human understanding, but believing that it is there may be all we need to do.