Thursday, January 28, 2016

I am an infant in Christ

It's 11:30 PM and I'm pacing my apartment with my screaming 1-month old infant daughter in my arms.  I'm begging her to calm down.  I'm all-out pleading with this tiny person to please be a good girl - to please give Mommy a break - to stop acting crazy (please don't judge me if you would never call your child crazy - sorry).  By this point, I'm the one that's going crazy.

I can not figure out what is wrong. I can't seem to do anything to soothe her.  I feel defeated. I'm alone at home, defeated and frustrated.

I start listing to her all that I had tried - "I changed you.  I fed you.  I sang to you. I bathed you.....What can I do? What do you want?"

Just then a thought crossed my mind.  "I wonder if that's what God thinks about me?"

I've spent years crying and crying through various stages in my life and experiences, and God has simply continued to feed me, protect me, try to change me. Through my struggles with depression when I spent hours and hours crying, what was God feeling?

I have everything I need; God has provided for me beautifully and yet I still find myself weeping to him.  Just like my tiny baby I am an infant in Christ.

I wonder if God ever looks down at me and sighs with frustration.  I wonder if he ever feels at a loss for what would soothe me.  We learn though bible scriptures that God will provide what we ask for; that God is an everlasting father who will always love us, guide us and forgive us.

God is the ultimate example for any parent.  And yet, as I look into my screaming baby's face I can not muster up a slither of the patience my God has  shown me.

Genesis 28:15    I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. 

You remember back when you were younger and you wanted something and your parents or family wouldn't get it for you - "for your own good". Or when you were forced to eat those darn vegetables when you hated it - but it was "for your own good".  I find myself thinking if parenthood is something God put into my life "for my own good".  Our father God knows everything before its happened, right?  Was he on his throne one day listening to my desperate cries when he decided he would give me a responsibility that would change me at the very core?

I'm terrified of my new role as Mommy.  I don't know what I'm doing.  I don't know how to soothe someone else when I myself need soothing.  And selfishly, I don't know how to truly care for someone else's every single need.  I'm simply trying my best.

I am an infant in Christ.  How can I restore my faith?  How can I build up the courage to ask and then know without a shadow of a doubt that my Father is listening and will provide what "is for my own good"?

James 1: 5-6      If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 

Are you an infant in Christ?

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