Raise your hand if you’ve ever held on to something so tightly, and despite your best grip and your very convincing pleas with your Heavenly Father, it was still taken away. And after some time had passed and you decided you would let go (like you had a choice anyway), the fog lifts and you can clearly see that God’s plan was better all along? My hand is high!
I saw this so clearly one night when I decided it was time to wean my son from the bottle at bedtime. He was fine with a sippy cup throughout the day, but that bedtime bottle was his jam. It was his constant. It was nourishing and soothing. It was comforting and by gosh, it was what he wanted. What he needed. And what he deserved. Right? I won’t tell you how many times I’ve felt that very same way about something in my life. How dare God take it from me?
Life in our household was complex. I was working fulltime. I had the privilege (and responsibility) of having my elderly father live with us while my mom was in her final stages of life in a nearby dementia care facility. My daughter was almost 18 and preparing to go away to college. My husband was battling stage IV lung cancer at the young age of 45. And my little guy was still taking a bottle to get to sleep because, frankly, I didn’t have the time or energy to fight that battle. When I decided it was ‘the night’, I tucked him in and offered a sippy cup of water. He was not happy. I heard his continual cries and long story short, I walked into the kitchen to see him leaning against the refrigerator with his little arms thrown up, crying “I want my bohh-dew.” He looked over at me, his eyes and his cries very clearly saying “You’re mommy...you can fix this...and I want my bottle.” He was sad. I was sad! This was hard.
Hearing his cry, my daughter came out of her room and our eyes met. We started to giggle at the little guy’s drama. And then I started to cry with him because he was hurting, and I knew I could fix it in a quick second by just giving him a bottle of milk. I teetered back and forth between a giggle and a cry, but I knew, as painful as this was for him, it was necessary for his growth. I had a plan for him. I mean, he couldn’t go away to college with a bottle, right? All I wanted to do was take his pain away. I couldn’t explain the bigger picture to him, but I had to do what I had to do. For his own good. Oh, my aching momma heart.
At that very moment, I realized this must be how God feels when we beg and plead and cry for what we want, knowing He can ‘fix it’ but He doesn’t. He is hurting with us but loves us enough to do the hard work. Our job is to trust. Our finite minds cannot understand his plan when we don’t see the big picture, but we can choose to trust that our loving Heavenly Father knows best. “When we can’t see his hand, we can trust his heart.”
When God takes our bottles, we are encouraged to trust that he has a plan far better than anything we could imagine. His loving eyes are on us. His heart is for us. And he loves us more than we know! Nothing can separate us from his love so what do we need to loosen our grip on?
And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. - Romans 8: 27- 28 (NIV)
Ginger Luc
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