Like A Baby in His Hands

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.