In the past 3 weeks since my baby girl, Acacia, was born,
there have been so many things that I see from day to day that remind me of
something spiritual, of God. I just wanted to share a few of these observations
about my baby and what God has been illustrating about Himself through them.
1. Acacia’s favorite
place to fall asleep is not in her crib, but on me. After breastfeeding,
she often falls asleep on my chest. When I put her in my Moby wrap, she usually
calms down fairly quickly and often falls asleep against me, sometimes even for
hours. She likes to be close to me, touching me, feeling my heartbeat. I think
it makes her feel safe.
This just reminds me how for a true child of God the Father,
our favorite place to “fall asleep” or to rest, is on Him. We do not “rest” on
the things in our lives—our good circumstances, the physical blessings that
come our way, the things we can see. We do not rest on other people, our
possessions, our hopes and dreams for the future, our memories of the past. . .
we rest only on the loving heart of our God. It is the place we were meant to
be; no other place is ever as good.
2. Acacia loves to be
held. I think sometimes when she is crying, it is not because of a physical
need but just because she wants to be in the arms of me or my husband—those who
know her and love her. The interesting thing that keeps coming to my mind when
Scott or I hold her, though, is that she has no control. When she is being
held, she can’t control where we take her or what we do with her. Even if she
kicks her legs and wiggles around, she is powerless to move anywhere. When we
are holding her, she is very much in a position of helplessness. We could drop
her, and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Yet she trusts that we
won’t; that she is perfectly safe in the arms of her mother and father. The
interesting thing is that when she struggles and tries to control things
herself, it becomes more difficult to hold her. We can hold her best when she
is just . . . still.
I absolutely love this thought, because for us to be a child
of God and for Him to be our Father means that He holds us at every moment.
This seems like a beautiful and precious idea—to be held in the arms of God—but
in reality I think it is a very scary place. Human nature is that we don’t like
to be out of control and entirely in someone else’s control, to be unable to
move ourselves around or taken anywhere someone else wants. To be vulnerable to
being dropped, with nothing holding us except for someone else’s hands. It’s
honestly scary. Except for the fact that it is Jesus Himself who is the One
holding us. To let Him love us perfectly we must relinquish control and stop
kicking and screaming. We must be still.
3. Acacia feels safe
when she is swaddled. This thought is similar to the previous one because
it’s also a way that she is actually more secure when she has less control.
When she is wrapped up in a swaddling blanket, it covers and envelopes her
whole body, keeping her hands and legs from moving around. It keeps her secure
and feeling safe.
Again, to be swaddled up like this reminds me of being
wrapped up in God’s complete love, power, and wisdom. While the baby likes
being swaddled usually, I think that for adults this would be something we
wouldn’t like. To have our limbs confined and unable to move where we want is
something we don’t want. But we must let God “swaddle” us up in His love, which
protects us and keeps us, and let Him carry us anywhere He in His wisdom knows
is best.
4. The next thought is something that reminds me of our sin
nature. When Acacia is hungry and wants
milk, she starts sucking on her hand. She does this all the time, and it
almost boggles my mind because she doesn’t seem to get the message. She even
does this when I am trying to put her to my breast to breastfeed; she just
stuffs her hand in her mouth instead of my nipple and gums it, as if her hands
could give her milk or something. I just want to say to her “HELLO! You can’t
get any milk from your hand. The milk is right here!” Somehow she doesn’t get
that, choosing instead the comfort of her own hand, and it takes time to
actually get her to latch on and truly feed.
This is just like us humans. It’s like God is the source of “milk”,
the source of spiritual fulfillment and satisfaction, the source of life,
really. He is reaching out to us and trying to feed us with Himself. But we
just stuff our hands in our mouth and suck on them instead. We turn our faces
aside from Him and choose the things that are more easily accessible to us, the
things we can see, the things we can control. We turn to family, friends, jobs,
money, possessions, dreams, memories, etc. etc., and try to “feed” on those
things. We somehow don’t see that no “milk” comes from those things. None of
these things will fill us and satisfy us. God is looking at us saying, “Hey, I
am right here! Come to me and let ME feed you!” Satisfaction will never come
from our own hands. Only from the One who loves us.
5. Acacia often cries
when I am trying to do something good for her. The perfect example is
changing her diaper. She is dirty and stinky, and I know she needs to be
changed. It’s interesting because she seems more content to sit in a poopy
diaper than to be cleaned. But when I take her dirty diaper off and start
wiping her, of course she cries. I just want to say, “Acacia, I am trying to
HELP you! You don’t need to cry. It’s ok, really!” Another example is giving
her a bath. Although I try to be as gentle as possible, she still cries. The
water must be scary; she doesn’t understand that is necessary in order to be
cleaned.
It is the same with God. All our lives, in so many ways, God
is doing something good for us, something that will bring us to Him, something
that will clean us, and yet these are the times when we kick, scream, and cry.
All we feel in those moments is that we are uncomfortable, exposed, naked to
the air, and that we don’t feel good. When Jesus said, “unless a kernel of
wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed” (John
12:24), all we feel is the dying part. It is necessary, and we hate it, the
dying to ourselves. So like the baby, we wail and resist. But Jesus goes on to
say “But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Seeds of eternal life, true life,
life in the Spirit of God, which is beautiful. This is the life Go d is trying
to produce in us. Jesus can only be born in us when we our own selves are laid
to rest and no longer in control. The loving Father is worthy of our lives because
He is God. What His hands do, although we may not understand, is perfect.
