Saturday, September 17, 2016

we are two

God does not seem to be in the business of explaining himself

but also, i never tried to explain myself to my two year old.

their capacity for understanding my motivations was simply not advanced enough.
i am convinced we are nowhere near anything resembling an equal relationship to God. we are two and He is infinite and our blankie is in the dryer.

but i always always had their best interests in mind - even when i carried them screaming to take a nap. one of our twins when he was around 12-18 months would LITERALLY run himself worn out until he hit his head and then i would take him to his crib and he would cry himself to sleep. he would not let me rock him. he would not let me soothe him to sleep. he would not be still.
so, as a loving mother, i decided to let him cry himself to sleep BEFORE he hit his head - in the best interest of his brain development.
this upset my other children - they hated hearing him cry and seeing his distress as i carried him to bed. i understood where they were coming from and met them with compassion and explained to them why i did what i did.
but i did not try to explain it to the baby
not because i didn't care if he understood
not because i was callous
but because he simply was unable to comprehend
all he knew was that he was being made to go to bed
to stop his happy playing
to cease his wonderful outside the crib existence
and nothing i could say would help him understand any other point of view - only time and maturity would do that

and that was not the baby's fault
it was not a shortcoming within him
it just was the way it was
if we don't understand God
if we are mad at God
and feel we are being treated unfairly
it doesn't mean we are wrong
it just means we don't understand
and maybe one day we will
and maybe we never will on this earth
and that's not through any fault of ours
it just is
but when we get home, we will see it all clearly
and then we will understand.
meanwhile, will we be content to wait?
will we trust our Father?
how about this? Even if we don't - He won't love us any less
and He will understand