What’s the first question you want to ask Jesus when you get to heaven?
Is it some of the heavy “why’s” of suffering or prayers not answered in the way you wanted?
This may sound frivolous, but I’ve always said my first question is going to be, “Why did I have to be sleep-deprived when my kids were little so I wasn’t awake enough to fully enjoy them?”
My dream is to be able to time-travel back to the days when my kids were 1 and 2 years old, but with the energy and perspective I have now – so I could be fully present with joy. This is what I was thinking about as I biked to coffee this morning.
When I sat down to read at my delightful Zimbabwean coffee shop, an aha jumped off the pages at me from the book of Proverbs.
The primary ingredient of wisdom is humility.
And here’s how it gave me a possible answer to my question for Jesus.
When we are sleep deprived and our kids are little with a bajillionty questions , we are desperate.
When we are sleep deprived and our teens are out with the car and curfew is creeping closer, we’re desperate.
When we are sleep-deprived because we know our college student is struggling for acceptance and there’s nothing we can do about it, we’re desperate.
Desperation fosters dependence on God.
Dependence on God = Humility
Perhaps our Friend, Jesus, wants us to realize right from the beginning, that we’re going to need a partner much bigger and wiser than ourselves in this job of parenting. Maybe He wants us to experience the truth that “His strength is perfected in our weakness.”
Today maybe Jesus is inviting us to open our hands and pray for our kids, knowing we’ll let them down, but He won’t. Our power is limited, but His isn’t. Our love is finite, but His is beyond anything we can imagine. We may be sleep-deprived, but He’s always awake.
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Thank you Laura for Everyday Grace!
Missing you!
So easy to forget that even the hard things (being sleep deprived) are used by God to draw us to Himself. Thanks for the reminder, Laura! ❤️
You live out dependence on Him so beautifully Molly!
I was so excited to share this with my daughter that has a 5 year old, 3 year old and 1 1/2 year old. They planned a fabulous first vacation to Disney 2 weeks ago. Her husband told me he got about 2 hrs. of sleep the night before they left, and my daughter had about an hour of sleep. Every child was waking up all night long with a bad dream, thirsty, or a bloody nose from the dry winter air! Thank you for the reveal that God IS at work!
Such a hard season! And so hard to keep things in perspective!