"Clothes, Mum!"

G got up the other morning with a grumpy face and a demeanor to match. As soon as I came out in the hallway she met me, frowning and muttering, "Clothes, Mum, clothes." She was still wearing her pajama shirt though she had changed her pants; She was clearly unhappy about something.

She led me into her room and opened her middle drawer - the one with the tiny little colored shirt taped on the front, and swept the back of her hand dismissively across the pile of clean shirts - there were probably at least a dozen. "No, Mum," she grumbled, then more insistently, "Clothes!"

At first I tried to interest her in one of the shirts, lifting off the top ones to see if there might be one hidden beneath that was more acceptable, but she continued frowning and whining and writhing about until her little sister entered the room, dressed in a summer outfit I'd picked up on a whim at Walmart yesterday. Then I realized she wanted to wear the matching outfit I'd bought for her.

I stifled a sigh, thinking of how many choices she had, she who just three weeks ago owned nothing. (A friend who adopted at the same time told me she'd acutally been asked by someone if her child came with clothes or was he naked!) G did not come home naked, but she did come wearing one of the many outfits I had brought to Ethiopia for her, since all the clothing in the orphanage was communally owned. Today she had a dresser full of clothing, most of it much more appropriate than the summery, sleeveless shirt she wanted on this 35 degree March morning.

It's hard to blame her - she's just a child. She even had the grace to thank me when I produced the outfit she was looking for from the corner where it had been dropped the night before. But I couldn't help thinking about my own frequent grunbling over the contents of the drawers God has filled for me. Like G, I have nothing outside His gifts to me, but I am so often discontent with the choices I have. I want someone else's talents, someone else's job, someone else's looks, someone else's life. Although I know that "godliness with contentment is great gain," I often don't choose to be content.

I have a restless heart. I don't know if I inherited it with my DNA - my dad changed jobs often and I have heard my mother described as restless - or if I inherited it from Adam, who also was not content with the choices he was given in Eden. Even as I hope to teach my daughters gratitude and contentment, I hope to train my own heart to be more content with what I have received from my good Father.