Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)
Tonight I was noticing just how much I am like our one- and two-year-old children. Now, for the most part I’ve learned to control my responses a bit more (not to mention my excellent potty-trained record) but watching them tonight—and in particular, the way I, their father, interacted with them—I realized just how much I am being the whiny, impatient, uninformed, short-sighted baby.
That’s exactly what you’d expect from a baby, right? The poor creatures can’t talk… they can’t do most things for themselves… they’re at our mercy! So, pretty often then are frustrated to the point of tears (along with kicking and screaming sometimes) and, well, that’s kinda how I felt tonight.
As I was bathing our 1-year-old son, he kept resisting me in various ways. He wanted to hold a toy a certain way at a certain time, but I need to bathe him and so he just had to wait for a bit till he could have it again. But, in his impatient short-sightedness … he cried. Then, once that was over, all was fine. Then while rinsing him off he was crying because the water was going over his face … but again, if he could just think of the bigger picture … he’d save himself the trouble of crying and all that fussing about his (very) temporary discomfort, since he’d be thinking of the great clean, warm, comfy feeling he was about to have in about 3-5 minutes.
After that, the same pattern ensued when we were drying off. He was cold, he was wet … and in the process of trying to fix that, he had cried as I dried him off and dressed him. Again, all was better in the end, but he didn’t like the “getting there” part. And then when we waited for his cup of milk to warm in the microwave—a routine he is quite familiar with—he only whimpered and complained about the wait. I want my milk now!!!
Aren’t we like that? I am. I was tonight. (Maybe am?) I reconciled our finances tonight and we are so far behind at the moment, and besides that we’re excitedly pursuing another opportunity it seems God is leading us toward … but it’s still out of our reach. And our bills are piling up, while income seems to only be trickling in. Ugh. All I can see is that I’m cold, wet, and there’s soap in my eyes. I’m missing the part where my Dad loves me, and he’s taking care of me.
There’s a lot to the idea of living in the moment. It’s important to be where you are, or you might miss it. But sometimes, I admit, just like my two babies … I am way too in the moment. I forget how God has been with us through everything along the way up till now, and I forget that he moves much slower than me. Just like Cameron wants me to get his milk ready in an instant … it doesn’t work that way! It takes time.
God moves like that. He sees the whole picture, and he’s working all things for our good. I do forget that sometimes…
I guess I can be such a baby.
By the way, the photo above is from the end of a photo shoot with all our kids (credit Lindsay Karl), and Cam was very done! We weren’t ramming his head into that tree branch or anything like that… 🙂