Parenting

Parenting
I was blessed October 22nd with a healthy baby giraffe (girl who will be very tall), she is unbelievably precious. I use the word precious because that’s the best word available to describe a harmless, helpless baby who is just a peach to look at. When I saw her and held her for the first time I cried and I’m not ashamed to admit it, actually I’m kind of proud to say it, I cried! However Gwen has already frustrated me on occasion and it just exposes my lack of patience. I mean, how can an infant frustrate me, she doesn’t even know what is going on. I’m embarrassed how little patience I have for this wonderful, sweet child of mine. Back to the crying thing; weeks ago I was at Christy’s parents house and I was sitting in a chair next to Gwen (my daughter) who was on the couch. I was having a conversation with Christy’s father when I saw out of the corner of my eye, Gwen launch herself off the couch. She smashed her face on the coffee table on her way to the ground. I gasped and snatched her up off the ground and into my arms, bringing her close to my chest. I was scared to look at the damage but I braced myself to do so and to my horror she had a huge dent above her eye. Gwen was whaling and it all hit me so hard I started crying. I couldn’t believe I let this happen to her, I was sitting right there. 15 minutes later she had a bruise and 30 minutes later it had almost completely gone away (kids are resilient). She was going to be okay, disaster avoided. I couldn’t help but think about the future and how I can’t prevent her from doing anything, I can only teach and hope she listens and obeys.
I say all this to bring it back to our relationship with God, He is like the parent and we are the kids. He loves us so much and teaches us so many good lessons in life that we think stink due to the pain we experience. However we never take into consideration the huge pain that we might be avoiding by handling the little stuff today. I’m sure God cries a lot over the choices that I make and even the pain that He allows into my life but He is sure that it is for a better purpose and a better me. Without pain we can never experience real joy, there is a balance like everything else in this world. It blows my mind how patient God is in comparison to me. I get mad at Gwen when I try to feed her and she tries to grab the spoon and spills food all over herself, then she will put her hand in her mouth take some food out and wipe her face. Come on Gwen, you’re better than that Gigi! But wait she is only 6 months old, where is my patience? Correlate that to God’s patience with new believers and the battle of the “Old Man” v.s. the “New Man”. How many times do we judge new believers for their struggle against old habits like “man, this guy didn’t except Jesus, look at him over there falling off”? Yeah! Pretty shameful huh, I’m guilty as any. How does God feel when we continue to damage or body and mind with the stuff we feed it (television, movies, music, food, drinks, etc…). He gives us a hangover to remind us of the consequences of too much drink or a stomach ache to remind us of too much food. But what if we keep doing it then what? As a parent what do you do with your kid who won’t change? Unfortunately I think we have to give them away to their sin and I think that is what God does sometimes too.
To sum this up I think it can be beneficial to be reminded of how amazing God is (patient, loving, gracious, merciful, omnipresent, forgiving, etc…). I really think He has designed this life to reflect Himself in many ways and parenting is just one of those parallels. I hope you all can experience Him in your parenting whether it is with your own kids or some kids you’ve been blessed with taking care of for the weekend. Let’s all be thankful for how much we’ve been given and how many warnings God gives us that we really don’t deserve. He is amazing!