It’s 1 am and I just got up to use the bathroom.
As I laid back down, I looked at the face of my three-year-old little guy in the middle of my bed, beautifully still.
My laying back down startled him and he started crying.
“Mommy’s here, bud. I got you. You’re ok. I love you. You’re such a treasure,” I reassured him.
And I meant it.
Deeply.
With everyone fiber of my being.
Even though he is going through a toddler stage where he says “No” a lot, and does what he wants to do stubbornly, much to my chagrin in public.
Oh how I meant it.
He’s a treasure.
A long-awaited treasure.
And the baby stage where he’d be still and let me hold him passed so quickly it seems,
that these moments when he is sleeping and not running around, busily… so that I can hold him, and look at him, and love on him, are cherished even more.
———-
As the daughter of God,
I sometimes forget that no matter how old I grow, He still loves me this way.
I sometimes forget that I’m His baby.
That He too cherishes stillness,
and my willingness to be held by Him.
Still. Secure. Snuggled. Loved.
As I have grown into new roles-
Wife
Mother
Worker
Leader… (Still not sure if I feel qualified to be called that)…
I have placed some big responsibilities on myself.
And that’s normal, to be expected, necessary even.
We can’t remain babies forever, always crying and consuming and never producing anything for anyone else to consume.
I see my own expectations of my children changing as they grow. Believing that they should mature, compose themselves with more grace, more initiative, and so on. Expecting that as they know better, they do better.
I have related to God as my parent in this way. Understanding that He too, desires for me to mature, to compose myself with more grace, to take more initiative in being a blessing than I do in looking to be blessed, and so on. Expecting that as I know better, I do better.
And yet, I suspect there’s more to his emotions about me that I do not understand.
A grace that I simply cannot fathom,
though I’ve tried to examine it.
A patience for me that is admirable.
Incomprehensible, really.
Me, who feels like a tangled mess of emotions some days.
Of anticipation and joy and wonder.
Moments of fear, and anxiety and frustration.
Frustration that I can’t control the world I live in, and my children live in.
And that sometimes I can’t even control my own self…my own emotions, my own will.
I can’t even always live up to the good standards I desire for my children. (Mommas, can you relate? I sometimes find myself hollering at my kids to stop their hollering! 🤦🏼♀️)
I’m like a grown-up toddler pulled this way and that, unsure of how to react sometimes, and often I could just really use a nap…
But I WANT to.
I want to get it right, to make Him proud.
I want to feel proud of myself
and experience the sureness that a well-done has been earned.
I want to be His treasure.
Even though I often feel quite sure I’d never be worthy to be called that.
I want to be his “good girl”,
even though I feel like I’m a hot mess
who belongs in time out,
until she gets her crap together.
The human in me puts a limit on God’s grace and patience,
and I think that I see, in this moment, that the more my own patience is tested by my toddler, the more helpless and exasperated I feel-
as if I, too, must be testing God’s patience with me. Not on purpose. But just because of the imperfect person that I am.
But I don’t think I’m supposed to relate to Him as a parent like that.
I’m comparing my very small capacity with His limitless. And it’s leaving me feeling as if I must be frustrating Him.
I’m forgetting God’s love for me isn’t based on something as erratic as my own behavior or anything I do or don’t do for Him, but rather what Jesus already did for me on the cross.
In this moment I’m suspecting, remembering, as if for the first time, that He is simply calling me to get lost in a moment of being held by him.
A moment (or a thousand moments through my day) of soaking up His love so that I CAN go beyond the limit of my own patience, with my children.
In my mother-role I can best relate to His unconditional love for us.
There’s not a thing my children could do that would make me love them any more or any less. I already love them with my entire being. And even when I get annoyed, or overjoyed with their behavior, my love for them remains the same. Infinite.
And I am human.
My capacity is so…small,
and yet this love is so enormously intense.
Thinking about how God IS this love…
He’s the source of it,
the Original,
the Everlasting…
the One with infinite capacity…
My heart is refilled.
My perspective is reshifted.
My heart is reassured.
No matter how much I rocked it, or bombed it today- in any of the areas of my life-
(because doesn’t it feel like we are always rocking it in one area, while dropping balls in another?)—
No matter how well or poorly I performed my roles in any given moment,
He’s there with that same unconditional love and support.
He’s the Heavenly Dad that doesn’t love us any less when we fall short of our own expectations (thank God, because I have high expectations of myself and fall short often)…
or any more when we exceed them (thank God, because if I truly believe this I’d become obsessed with my own performance and get caught up in perfectionism because I crave His being pleased with me… which, now that I think of it, may be what’s been happening with me lately. 😉)
———-
I’m so thankful for the 1 am wake-up call of my bladder, followed by the moment of gazing at my toddler in my bed, filled with love and gratitude- simply that he’s mine… that I get to love on him… and for the whispers of my heavenly Dad that assures me, even though I can’t fully comprehend Him, He feels the same of me too.
And of YOU, dear reader, if you call Him Father.
He doesn’t look at us, resting, and remember what kind of a day we had.
Because of Jesus, who died so that we could become children of God… and not because of our own performance or earning of any position, (thank God)..,
He looks at us as His children-
His sometimes chaotic and sometimes angelic- but always beloved, children.
We have His heart.
Just like our kids have ours.
He’d do anything for us.
& Mostly He just wants us to be able to rest in this- that He’s got us.
That he LOVES us.
That it’s not about performance.
But- our behavior will naturally be more settled when our hearts are secured and settled in this pure and unshakable love of His.
Romans 8:14-17 NIV
“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
From Full 