I have nannied on and off over the past eight years and let me tell you, sometimes I learn much more profound lessons from 3-year-olds than I do from adults. A couple of years ago, I was sitting through a toddler meltdown. I don’t remember the cause of the anger — it might have been that I wasn’t letting her change her clothes for no reason. Whatever it was, she was upset about it. While trying to gently talk her down, I said something like, “I just want you to be happy.” Approximately seven minutes later, she was happily bouncing on a mattress when she paused, looked at me and said, “I’m happy now,” and resumed her play. I was stunned. For adults, it can be so addictive to cling to the control of self-righteous anger. I’ve certainly been guilty of the subtle self-aggrandizement of rehearsing the ways I’ve been wronged. There is nothing wrong with being clear about injustices and hurts that have been perpetrated. The problem comes when I cling to that ledger of harms as a sort of identity marker or a way of grasping at importance. It’s easy to stay stuck in a place where I don’t need to be. Whether or not I am always following through on it, the profound and humble generosity of that little girl has remained a powerful call in my heart towards forgiveness and letting go.
More recently, I was trying to get another amazing little girl buckled into her car seat so we could go home for lunch. Her brother was already strapped in and waiting but she was doing some evasive maneuvers. She would tell me that she wanted to do it herself, so I would give her space and then she would back away even further. By the time I was finally buckling her in, I was frustrated. But I remembered to notice that sneaking, adult instinct to stay in my frustration for a little longer, as if that was how justice worked. Noticing that instinct, I reminded myself that everything was fine, nothing else justice-related needed to happen. I forced myself away from that instinct and back into silly mode, tickling her face with my hair. I was rewarded with one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen from her and, a moment later, as I slid into my seat, she offered an unprompted, “I love you, Cinta.” I don’t know the degree to which she actually understood the choice I had made; I suspect she understood it more than most adults would give her credit for. But whatever her degree of understanding, it was a wild affirmation of the beauty of mercy.
When I cling to my idea of what I am owed for the ways I have been wronged, it is out of desperation. It is born of the feeling that I have to earn my worth, earn being loved. These desperate and transactional instincts in me project an image of a God who is similarly stingy and transactional. That image of God is a lie.
The Eastern Catholic practice of the Jesus prayer is a response to St. Paul’s call to pray without ceasing. The standard version of the prayer is simple, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The goal is to attach that prayer to our breathing. We breathe in “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God” and breathe out, “have mercy on me, a sinner.” The idea is that gradually, as we practice more and more, the very act of breathing is itself transformed into a prayer, allowing us to pray at all times, even when we sleep. Mother Natalia, on the podcast “What God is Not,” pointed out that even the order of this prayer is important: we have to breathe in Jesus before we can breathe out our sinfulness. Being freed of our sin is not something we do alone.
I am so grateful for this practice. Even at my absolute zero, beginner level of it, I am learning to turn the rhythm of my breathing into a reminder of God’s infinite mercy and of the reality that I can choose to be completely dependent on it. It is easy to impoverish the idea of mercy into merely the idea of forgiveness of sins. But mercy is the way that God lavishes his abundant and uncalculated love on his people. Mercy is giving more than is deserved. The more that I lean into this gift-centric understanding of God and his world, the more I can begin to see myself as a child: not doing anything to earn or deserve anything, just being dependent on and receptive to the boundless love of God the Father.
When I lean into this version of reality, the consequences of my actions and my desire to grow in virtue are not diminished. On the contrary, by putting them in the proper context of being overwhelmingly loved, they become more possible as well as more free. Holiness is not a project I have to achieve in order to get to Jesus. Holiness is the gradually unfolding fruit of receiving and responding to the love of God. The more that I receive the gifts of God, the more I am also free to offer myself as a gift in whatever way I can to those around me.
Because of all of this, my word of the year for 2026 is “gift.” This disposition is not my automatic tendency. But the more time I spend being mentored by Byzantine spirituality and by the 3-year-olds I nanny, the more I see the beauty and the fruit of this childlike theology.
