I am confident of this very thing

We need to hold sleeping babies to remember they don’t always cry. To remember and imprint on our minds and arms and chests what it feels like to hold this warm, soft, squishy gift. Babies need to be held they find it comforting, sometime they need to sleep on us. I think sometimes we need it too. Sometimes we need to snuggle with them and let it go on for longer than they would. We need to take deep inhales of their sweet smell. We need to count their fingers and toes without them wriggling down to run and play. Sleeping babies don’t need to be held, they are sleeping…but we need it. We need the reminder of grace and peace. We need the bonding of holding them in quiet after a day of screaming and crying and fighting naps and no showers.

I still feel this with my 3.5 and 5 year old. I need to lay in bed with them at night and sing songs and pray and snuggle. I need to have them hug me and I want to be hugged. I know I’m their mom and they aren’t responsible for filling my love bank. But, it feels good when they do. I need quiet and I deeply love when I can have quiet with them.

My mom sang a song over me that I find myself singing over my kids. Especially on the hard days, on the days where I am not sure if anything stuck, on the days where I lost my temper and need the reminder that God is working in my own heart too. That we are new creations and we are not finished yet!

“I am confident of this very thing, That He, who began, a good in you. He will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ”

This parenting thing is hard, being a Christian is hard, being a human being some days feels hard. We have a lot to do. We have a lot of sin to fight in our own lives and then we have to teach our children how to fight sin in their lives. Somedays it feels like a battle on every front. Like you are fighting a man in front, behind and on both sides and you just didn’t win the battle today. Somedays we don’t win the battle. Some days we fall into bed seeing our mistakes, seeing our sin, being ever so obviously aware of our need for Jesus and on those days this song reminds me of truth. IT reminds me to wake up and keep fighting. It reminds me that these little people running around my house saying “whatever” or screaming “no” are not finished. It is not my job to finish them. But it is my job to walk alongside them and to pray that we make it to the finish line. To teach them to hear God’s voice and to know the difference between lies and truth so that when the lies distract them from all fronts the truth’s whisperings are consistent and solid. So that their roots have gone down deep and strong and help them stand up.

He has begun a good work in me but He is definitely not finished yet…praise God! I believe He began a good work in them and as the Creator who is good and loving and cares for us He will not let it wither and die. He will not give up on them. So, on days when I feel like giving up. When I give up on myself I look at my sleeping baby, I curl up next to my sleeping toddlers and I sing in the quiet and praise God for a new tomorrow to try again and a new tomorrow with God working in us all!