“How do I know if it’s God talking to me, or if it’s Satan talking to me, or if it’s ME talking to me?”
Really? She’s 6. I was over 30 before I attempted to address that question for myself. She is so incredibly deep, it’s amazing.
I struggled with how to answer her appropriately. I didn’t want to blow off such an important question with too childish of an answer, but then again, she IS a child.
Here is the bottom line of what I told her:
1) The more you talk to God, the more you’ll recognize His voice. Just like you recognize the voice when your spouse, mom, or best friend call you on the phone without them having to introduce themselves each time.
2) Compare what you are being told against the Bible. God is never going to tell you to do something that goes against what He tells us in His Word. So if you hear “go kick that girl because she has on a blue dress and your favorite color is pink” – that’s not from God. God would not tell you to kick anyone.
3) It’s ok to ask God to clarify things for you. He wants you to understand Him, and He isn’t going to be offended if you are TRYING to understand, but are having trouble. Tell Him you need help, and He will help you.
This past Saturday night, just before Bug went to bed, I was rocking her in the rocking chair. I feel so incredibly blessed that she still lets me do this from time to time, even at 5 (and a half!).
Suddenly, she burst into tears! She said “I don’t want to grow up. I want to stay a kid forever.” I assured her that she had tons of time to enjoy being a kid, and when it was time for her to be a grownup, she would WANT to be a grownup! She was worried about outgrowing her bunk bed (a twin!), so I told her about how I slept on a bed that size until I was a much older grownup and it fit just fine.
Then the conversation got around to us moving (ahhh! the real worry!). We know that about a year from now our family will be moving. We don’t know where yet. Most of the time, Emily is super excited about it. God blessed her with an amazing sense of adventure and curiosity. She wants to visit more countries and states than I think I even knew existed at her age.
However, this time, she was bawling. She was scared and worried about the move. I held her close and told her she could ask me anything. That Daddy and I had both moved many, many times in our life, so we could tell her all about it. She’s moved before, but she was too young to remember it. Now, she’s starting to process the concept of moving, and trying to figure it all out. See, she’s a detail person and a planner. That’s who she is. So, rather than focusing on the adventure of it, right now she was focused on the little details.
What was she worried about? Well, here were a couple of her questions.
* What if my new bedroom doesn’t have a window? I assured her that her bedroom, would in fact, have a window! She loves to look out her bedroom window!
* What if we are driving to our new home and we have to stop, but we can’t sleep in the van….where will we sleep? Obviously she had forgotten the many times we’ve slept in a hotel room on the way to a destination! I reminded her of the hotel stops when we went to Florida this past year, and that settled her mind.
Last time she did this, she was concerned because she “would never get to go to the zoo again!”, but was fine once I showed her that there are zoos in or near most cities, and that she would definitely get to go to the zoo again!
She was also curious about having a yard to play in, and since I don’t know if we’ll be in a house or apartment at first, I couldn’t promise that. But once I told her that apartments have swimming pools, she said she wanted us to live there!
Our sweet girl is not a big fan of change. She likes to plan ahead and know what’s going to happen….exactly how it’s going to happen. So this first move will be challenging for us. We’ll have to give her lots of details, without giving her ones she doesn’t need to know at her age.
As she was worrying about whether or not her bedroom would have a window, I was reminded of Christ in Matthew 6:25-39. He tells us not to worry because he will take care of us, even more than he does the birds and the flowers. He’s already in the details. He sees the big picture, when we only see what’s right in front of us.
Just the same, I can worry about where we are going to be stationed, what our house will look like, if it will have a microwave built in, whether I’ll have a bathtub or just a shower…..Or I can just relax, take it as it comes, and trust that God has it all planned out for us.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:6-7)
The other day my daughter was practicing riding her bike. She was working on her turns and making figure eights without turning too much and falling over. I told her “Practice makes perfect!”, and she told me “No it doesn’t, Mommy! No one is perfect except God.”
How right she is!
If only practice made perfect, then maybe I could have hopes of being a perfect mother one day, but alas, it doesn’t….and I can’t. Lately, I find myself making mistake after mistake after mistake. I lose my temper, or get upset about something I shouldn’t, and I end up having to go once again and apologize to my 5 year old for getting too mad, or yelling, or not listening well enough. It’s humbling. Even more humbling when she practically interrupts me to quickly say, “it’s ok Mommy, I forgive you!”.
I am finding that the more that I acknowledge that God is growing me in an area, the more I struggle with it. Also, I and realizing that I tend to be harder on Emily in the areas that I myself need the most work in.
For just one example – she gets upset because she’s not getting her way about something and gets grumpy with me. DUH, right? She’s a kid! But when she does this, I get upset with her because she’s upset, instead of just letting her be upset. I accuse her of being selfish and getting upset just because she doesn’t get her way. Wait – aren’t *I* upset because I’m not getting MY way? I’m not getting a nice, perfectly obedient child every minute of the day, so I get upset because it’s inconvenient for me to stop and discipline her, or teach her at this very moment. Now who is being selfish? I’m expecting her to have adult level behavior for issues that took me years as an adult to learn….and that I’m still learning. Why are my expectations so high (too high) of her sometimes?
I’ve often heard saying, “When you point a finger at someone, there are 3 more fingers pointing right back at yourself”. Try it, you’ll see. No really…stop and try it. Point at something or someone. See those 3 folded fingers? They are pointing right back at YOU!
I find that SO often when I am saying something to Emily out of frustration or anger, it’s like God was saying them to ME instead. “You need to get in control.”, “You need to listen to me”, “You aren’t paying attention to what I’m saying.”, “Are you thinking of yourself or others?”, “Are you being a blessing to others right now?”.
OUCH.
So, I’ll keep practicing. Every day for the rest of my life. I’ll never be perfect, but I do hope to become more and more Christ-like. In the meantime, I surrender all to Him!
“He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor.” ~ Proverbs 21:21
The Bible tells us that unless we become like a child, we will not enter the kingdom of Heaven.
"I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ~ Matt 18:3
I learn so much from my little girl each day! God uses her to teach me about His character, and the qualities He wants in each of us. I find that I do much better when I strive to be more like her, than when I focus on trying to make her more like me.
Yesterday, I talked to Bug about her play kitchen she’s had since she was 2. She played with it for a couple years and thoroughly enjoyed it! However, now it just sits in our kitchen taking up space and she never plays with it anymore. Her interests have taken her elsewhere, and she prefers to help Mommy cook in the real kitchen than to pretend to cook in a pretend kitchen.
So, I gave her some choices.
1) She could move it outside and see if she played with it outside differently. 2) She could sell it and use the money to buy something else. 3) She could give it away.
She chose option #4 – “I want to sell it and give all the money to God because helping other people is more important than toys.”
WOW.
Why is it that my first (sinful) reaction in my mind is “Are you sure?? You don’t want the money for something else? You could tithe on it, but then buy something else, you know. “ Thankfully my brain-to-mouth filter was turned on, and I didn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, I told her how proud I was of her choice and of her generosity.
Right now, I’m spending my quiet time in Psalm 119. This morning, I picked up where I left off yesterday and read verses 36-37,
“Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.”
We don’t need to raise our kids to be grownups who seek to “have it all”. We need to cherish our children, and look to them as examples of what God wants us to be like.
