Category: God the Parent

Space Mountain

My four year old is the size of an average six year old. No lie. And he has zero fear. He LOVES thrill rides! So on our recent trip to Disney he wanted to ride ALL the rides. 

As soon as he heard the words “Space Mountain” he was on board. But I was not so sure. “It’s going to be dark and kind of scary. It goes really fast and I will have to sit behind you because I can’t sit next to you on that ride.” He heard my warnings but said, “I still want to do it!” 

So off we went to the mountain. He got a little nervous before we boarded but he was reassured when I promised him I’d be right behind him the whole time. We buckled in and he gave a big thumbs up to the cast member starting the ride.

Our little spaceship turned the corner into the darkness. I was watching the seat in front of me, waiting for it. And a moment later a little hand peaked over the edge. I grabbed on to it and gave it a little squeeze. I held his hand for the rest of the ride. He absolutely loved it!

Sometimes we have to go through dark and scary times in our lives. Maybe we had no idea what kind of ride we were in line for. We suddenly lost someone or something that we depended on and were thrust into the darkness with no notice before that first drop.

Maybe we knew exactly what was in store for us but we knew it was something we had to do. Perhaps it was a bad habit that we had to give up to get more freedom in our lives. Or something we knew we had to stand up for or fight for because it was the right (albeit hard) thing to do. 

Or maybe we find ourselves going through a dark time with someone else. Someone we love has decided to push forward and enter the darkness, so we go along with them and their Disnerd friend who honestly didn’t know that it was your least favorite ride (Sorry about that! I swear I didn’t know!). But we go with them because we love them and want to support them. 

When you find yourself in a dark and scary ride, remember to reach your hand back. God the Parent is watching and waiting for that chance to comfort you. He hasn’t left you, he is with you the whole time, even when you can’t see him. 

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” Psalms 23:4

That’s Disgusting!

My 4-year-old, being always interested in how things work, pulled his stool over and glanced into the mixer. “Ew, that looks gross!” He said, scrunching up his nose. 

Honestly, I didn’t think it was “gross” but nor would I want to eat it at that point. So I told him to wait until we were finished. It wasn’t done yet. 

My kids love to bake with me, which is awesome because I love to bake! And it turns into a great way to teach math and science concepts under the guise of helping mommy cook. This week we were making banana bread. It was a slightly different recipe than I usually use as my Nana’s version is packed away in storage at the moment. This recipe started by mixing the butter with sugar until it is light and fluffy. 

The next steps involved all the other wet ingredients to be mixed in another bowl. Eggs were broken, yolks were separated, and fragmented eggshells carefully removed before adding it to the mashed bananas, vanilla, and whatever other ingredients were needed. By the time these were mixed together, my son made another face. “That’s disgusting!”

And it was. Nothing looks good covered in gooey egg. “Yes, it looks disgusting now, but we’re not done. You have to wait until it’s finished.”

We add this to our butter and mix again. “I am not eating that!” He proclaimed, pulling another face at the concoction. 

“You will like it when it’s done. You need to wait.”

Finally, the mixture was complete and the batter poured into the bread loaf pans. While he still said it looked “terrible”, he did not shy away from licking the beaters and trying to stick his head in the bowl to get up any other little bits of banana bread batter left behind. 

Once the banana bread was finished baking and was just barely cool enough to eat, he gobbled up his slice and asked for more. While the baking process was “disgusting” and “terrible”, the final product was delicious!

And I thought about how this is like our lives. There are points in my life where if you looked in the bowl you would say, “that’s horrible” or “I don’t like that”. But the Baker (God) wasn’t done with me yet. He’s still not. 

So remember that when you peak into the bowl of someone else’s life (or even when you glance at your own), you are only seeing one step in the recipe, one point in the process. And sometimes it’s not pretty. Sometimes it’s a disgusting mess. But God isn’t finished yet. Trust Him and let Him keep working so that he can bring something sweet out of all that goo.

“…being confident in this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6

Faith, Trust, and Eeyore

“But where is he?” The panicked voice was not that of my son, but my own. You see, Eeyore is lost. He is my 4-year-old’s  favorite stuffed animal and he has not slept willingly without him since he got him almost 3 years ago.  

And now he is lost. Not just ‘I can’t find him’ lost, but possibly, probably ‘packed away and gone to storage for several months’ lost. And momma is worried.

My son, not so much. He shrugs and says, “I don’t know,” as he crawls into bed for nap time, expecting to be reunited with his Eeyore just as soon as mommy finds him. He knows from experience that this is not usually a long wait. Mommy is pretty good at finding Eeyore.

Now already in my head I can foresee the tears and sadness that will overwhelm my son when he realizes Eeyore is gone, gone. Maybe I could go retrieve him. I would have to search a lot of boxes, but maybe he is in there somewhere. Perhaps I could find a replacement and just hope he doesn’t notice that suddenly Eeyore’s head doesn’t flop to one side. All I can see is the worst-case scenario.

This is a catastrophe and the boy doesn’t even realize it!!

But he didn’t freak out. He didn’t throw a fit or worry himself silly. Sure, Eeyore might have been packed away without him noticing, but he’s not concerned. Why? Because he trusts that Mommy will find Eeyore and all would be right in the world.

I wish I could be this way with God. I have seen God take a miserable situation and bring something amazing out of it. I have watched him ‘find Eeyore’ for me time and time again. And yet, my first response so many times is to freak out and worry that I’ll never find what I thought I’d lost.

Hopefully, next time I will remember my son, his Eeyore, and the complete faith he had in me to provide for him. I’ll probably save myself weeks of anxiety and some gray hairs by remembering all the times God came through in the past.

Oh, and Eeyore? He was in the one room that didn’t get packed away, just waiting for Mommy to find him and place him back in the loving (though tight-squeezing) arms of my son.

For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness, give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. Psalm 86:10-12

We’ll Be Lost Forever!

One of my favorite activities in the fall is to go outside and do a corn maze. It’s fun to wander around in plants that dwarf you and really exhilarating when you find your way back out again. And there’s always that little bit of fear that you’ll never find your way out that adds to the excitement.

Well, that fear was a bit too much excitement for my kids. We went out as a family during the daytime. The corn was about 6 feet tall and my husband is about 6’5″. The kids and I, however, are somewhat (a lot) shorter.

After the first 15 min of running and giggling, my kids seemed to notice that they were lost. Not only lost, but lost in a giant field of corn that was twice as tall as them! They could not see any way out. My daughter, generally dramatic, cried, “We’re going to be lost forever!”

Very calmly, my husband assured them that we would be fine and he could see the way out. He was pretty sure we needed to go left.

We did go left, until another family came back towards us from that direction, telling us it was a dead end. Now my son, who is not usually so dramatic, starts to freak out.

My husband still insists we need to go this direction. “But the other family said no,” I said, starting to get anxious myself now that I am facing 2 impending pint-sized melt downs while lost in a corn maze.

We turned back and walked away from the path he suggested. A few minutes later, when the kid’s anxieties reached fever pitch, we committed the cardinal sin of cutting through the rows of corn where there was no path to get onto the wide exit lane. (Sorry Gillis Hill Farms.)

Now, why was this such an issue? Why were my kids so convinced that we were doomed to spend the rest of our lives in the cornfield? Because we did not trust the one person in our group who could see the way out.

The three of us were not able to see over the obstacles in front of us. We were so consumed by the limited information we could see that we forgot we had a member of our party who could see past it. And when a family we did not know told us the way ahead was a dead-end, we trusted them over a member of our own family.

Sometimes in life we do the same. We see the troubles in front of us and we are convinced there is no getting around them. Other people assure us it is hopeless. And we listen and agree.

All the while, God is reminding us that he is tall enough to see over the problem. If we would listen to him, he would lead us on the right path. But we too often ignore him and follow our own anxieties and the recommendation of people who truly don’t know any better than we do. We end up creating our own solutions which are usually more destructive than if we’d just taken the path God suggested.

And by the way, hubby was right. If we had gone left, we would have circled back around to the exit lane.

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Milkshakes beat graham crackers

The other night we went to my mom’s house for dinner. It had been a looooong week and I had already decided to treat myself to something tasty on the way home. Something frozen, maybe with cookies mixed in, and definitely made by someone else.

So when my five-year-old asked for dessert while we were still at CiCi’s house, I told her to wait. We would get something later.

“But Mommy, why can’t I have a cookie?”

“Because CiCi has no cookies.” Easy answer. “Wait till we leave and we’ll get something.”

A minute later she came back again, “But why can’t I have a graham cracker? I know CiCi has graham crackers.”

It was true, CiCi had graham crackers. And graham crackers are an excellent dessert when you can convince your children that they’re basically the same as a cookie. 

CiCi agreed that she had graham crackers and offered them to me. Looks like my five-year-old will get what she wants, right? 

But I had other plans. Better plans. I could let her have the graham cracker and then get my own milkshake on the way home. Not lying, I thought about it. But when I have something so tasty as a milkshake, I want to share it with my children, especially since it is a rare treat for them. 

I told her no. We would wait. 

My daughter did not know what she was waiting for. To her, I was the mean mommy who said no to both her dessert ideas. She wanted her treat now and she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t give her the good thing she had suggested. After all, I had given them to her in the past. I know she likes them. So why was I holding back now?? 

I asked her, “Do you trust me?”

“Well, yeah…. but I want dessert.”

“Maybe I have something better for you in mind, you just have to wait.”

To her credit, she stopped asking then. She understood that if mommy says she has something better in mind for dessert, then there is something better coming and she does not have to keep asking for the lesser thing. 

How many times do we misunderstand God’s promises because we think we should have what we want now, not realizing he’s planning to give us something even better if we trust him? How many times does he ask us to trust him that he will work out something more meaningful than what we have in mind? And are we able to calm down and wait or do we throw a fit and demand our way?

God and I don’t operate in the same way (you should be thankful for that). So maybe he’s not quite as vindictive as me, but I think sometimes when we dig in our heals and insist on our way, he lets us have it, even if we are cheating ourselves out of something better. Because when we resist God’s leading in our lives, we are saying, “I trust me more than you.” We are telling him that those graham crackers are better than any other dessert he would think to offer. 

But if we choose to trust him, we are saying, “I know what I want, but your will be done.” And sometimes he surprises us with a milkshake. 

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

No Chick-Fil-A?!?!

“What?!?” My five-year old asked, shocked.

Her normal routine had been changed. Fridays meant ballet. And after ballet we would meet with Daddy for dinner at Chick-Fil-A. That’s how it happened most Friday nights and that’s how she expected tonight to happen.

But this was not a normal Friday. This Friday her little brother was sick. And after picking up a feverish little dude from the after-school care, this momma had decided we would be going home.

“But if we don’t go to ballet, then we can’t go to Chick-Fil-A!” She insisted.

The fact that her brother was quiet on this point just proves how sick he was feeling…

“Yeah, we’ll have to do that another time,” I told her.

“Then what are we going to do? That was going to be dinner! And if we can’t go out to eat then we can’t have dinner! Do we even have food at home? How are we going to eat?!?” She asked, half-panicked.

I almost laughed because she’s FIVE. And yes, we have food at home. No one was in danger of starving.

“We have plenty of food at home and you don’t need to worry about not eating. When have we ever had to not-eat because Mommy didn’t want to cook?” I asked. I mean, really, she had no reason to be so concerned. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t provided all the meals she’s ever needed from the minute she was born.

And that’s when it hit me, as if God was tapping me on the shoulder with a teasing little smirk, “Don’t you tend to get anxious over the things I’ve promised to provide?”

Well, crap. Yes, I do. It never felt so ridiculous as when I watched my five-year-old try to carry the anxiety of meal planning.

Especially now, with all the uncertainty in the world around us, how often do we try to take on the nervousness of the what-ifs when God has already promised to take care of it? And what good does it do us to worry?

About as much good as a five-year-old freaking out about meal prep.

 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:25-34

Not Nice Lips

I have a little girl, so I knew that at some point she would be pressured to look a certain way. I did not expect that to happen at the age of three.

My daughter was quieter than usual. This is not normal for her. She talks constantly. To see her suddenly quiet and introspective was somewhat unnerving.

“Mommy,” she finally broke her silence, “Girl At School said that I don’t have nice lips. She said my lips aren’t pretty.”

There are so many things wrong with this statement! First, Girl At School is in the 3-4 year old preschool class with my daughter. They’re three! Why on earth would they even be thinking about their lips?? And to tell another child their lips aren’t pretty? How is this happening?

Deep breath, momma. This is the moment I knew would come one day. Granted, I thought she’d be closer to double digits when it happened, but here it is. This is the chance to share something profound with my daughter; a moral lesson she will carry with her for the rest of her life. She can look back on this in the years to come and it will give her strength and guidance.

I looked at my baby girl and said, “Girl At School is a butthead.”

Okay, not exactly something I would submit for a mom-of-the-year award. Now, while I won’t say I was mad at a three-year-old kid, I couldn’t help but be a little upset when I saw the hurt and confusion in my child’s eyes. She shouldn’t have to deal with people picking apart her appearance at the age of three. The butthead comment just slipped out.

What’s crazy is that we were mean to God’s son, Jesus. Really mean. We killed him. That’s slightly worse than saying someone has bad lips. And yet, God still loved us. He should have called us all buttheads, turned his back on all of us, and lived in Heaven in peace. But he didn’t want to do that. He loves all us buttheads and even though we were mean to his child, he still made it possible (through Jesus’ death and resurrection) for us to join him someday. That’s pretty cool.

Before you think I’m a completely terrible mom, after my comment my daughter laughed (which was the point) and said, “Yeah she is, but I won’t tell her that because that would hurt her feelings.” So I must be doing something right.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.

Elsa’s Waterpark Adventure

“Mommy, I just throwed up,” she tells me as she stumbles out of her room at naptime.

Oh dear. Sure enough, she threw up all over her bed. Her pillows and blankets all need to be washed. Right in the middle of that mess is her favorite plush doll, Elsa.

Elsa goes everywhere with my daughter. She has had her since she turned two and has barely let her out of her sight. Now she’s covered in vomit.

My baby girl watches as I pull off her bedding and make a careful pile on the floor. “What are you doing?” She asks.

“I have to wash everything that got dirty,” I tell her.

Her face changes from mildly curious to absolutely horrified when she sees Elsa land on that pile.

“Not Elsa! She can’t go in the wash!” She pulls Elsa from the pile and hugs her to herself. The tears start running down her cheeks. She is terrified that Elsa won’t come back from the laundry.

“It’s okay, the washing machine is just like a water park for Elsa. She’ll have a great time in there!”

I’m not sure she fully believes me. I hold out my hand and wait for her to place Elsa in my care. She is still hesitant but finally agrees to let me wash her beloved toy. Elsa is carefully placed in my hand with a tearful plea to be gentle with her.

Fast forward two hours and Elsa emerges from the dryer intact and the cleanest I have seen her in a long time. I re-braid her hair (which had fallen out long before the vomit incident) and give her to my baby girl. There is a beautiful reunion between girl and doll and it happens just in time for bedtime. All is once again right in my daughter’s world.

Sometimes we make a mess of things; either through our actions or just the fact that we’re human living in an imperfect world. God has to come in and clean up. It’s not always easy to let him. If we give our marriage or our child or our job to God we have to trust that he will take care of it just as we would.

Spoiler alert, he takes care of it better.

It’s not an easy thing to remember. We hold our messed up situation close and instead of handing it to God. We imagine way worse scenarios and then convince ourselves that the thing we fear may happen will actually happen. We go to other people and complain to them about it. We let the worry consume us. We snuggle that vomit covered plush doll to our hearts and refuse to let it go.

After all, why would God want to fix it?

Why should I care about a little plush doll? Because it matters to my daughter. God cares because it matters to us. He loves us and he’s not going to let anything destroy our favorite Elsa doll.

Best of all, God doesn’t do anything halfway. He takes care of us and cleans us up, making us (and our situation) better than before… and even adds a new braid.

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7