Anticipating a New Arrival, Remembering Old Lessons


I've been a grandmother for a little over 5 years and in April we will be welcoming our fifth grandchild. I wish I had paid a lot more attention to the details of being a mother of small children while I was going through it. I started journals for each of my 4 but I wrote very little. I guess I was too busy living it to write that much. It seems like all  I can remember are inconsequential things like "Very few of your toys made any noise." or embarrassing things like "When you were nursing, you used to always----"  Then I am reminded that because of God's grace there are lessons I remember.

Often when a young woman gets married she is told by someone in her world, “ This wedding is all about you.” To be in control , to be able to make as many of her desires happen as possible,  wouldn’t every bride want this? Usually the new couple doesn’t get past the honeymoon before the bride has to drop the “it’s all about me” attitude. If the couple wants the marriage to last then the theme has to at least become “it’s all about us”. Control can not successfully be held by one person for very long.

Usually a year or more goes by, when a couple realizes that the “us” is now going to be a group instead of a couple. This third part of us can be terribly demanding, decreasing the ease with which we talk to each other, eat our food, sleep through the night and most other activities. Now it’s not a beautiful bride living according to the theme of  “It’s all about me.” It’s a cute adorable helpless baby who seems certain that you have no choice but to respond to her every smile and her every cry.

During that period of time between cute but often annoying babyhood and the highly verbal preteen years, God graciously taught me an important lesson. I still wanted life to be all about me. My wedding was a distant dream. My world was filled with sticky fingers, half eaten or rejected food, constant chatter and cries of “ not fair”. Sometimes when my plan for the perfect day would go awry, when  abstract art would appear on a wall, when pouting or whining was the only language my children could speak, anger welled up inside of me when I tried to turn right side up my upside down world.

I don’t remember exactly when I became aware of this passage and how it applies to child raising. I just know that many times as the heat of anger would spread over me, James1:19-20 would come to mind. “ Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness God desires.” It’s never been all about me. What does this passage say? God desires people to be righteous. What was often my desire? My desire was that I would be able to win the battle of wills over my child, that my child would know that I’m smarter and stronger, that my relationship with him was all about me being in control.

 When we look at Psalm 37:4 we learn the promise that brings together my desires and God’s desires. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” What a relief this verse is. It does not speak of work or the stress of needing to exercise control. As you delight in God, knowing He is the one truly in control, you can rest in His ability to change your desires for His glory and your good.

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