We've had a string of rough nights over here Chez LDubs. Little Bit had a fever three days in a row, then some lovely episodes of gassiness brought on by her newly discovered love of roasted broccoli (Parenting score: +10 points for the child eating, and actually liking, a healthily prepared vegetable; -25 points for forgetting to give her gas drops BEFORE she woke up at 2 in the morning screaming like a banshee and farting explosively).
Particularly maddening was that Little Bit would begin to calm down and appear to fall asleep, and just when I had started to relax and think we were out of the woods, she would rear her head up, let out a piercing cry, and somehow wriggle, howling, into a sitting position while still mostly unconscious like some kind of baby zombie rising from the metaphorical dead. We repeated this tease SEVERAL times in a row that night, hence my over-the-top lamentations. I bet you've been there.
Amidst all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth, and especially just as I was about to drift into dreamland each time she seemed to be headed for sleep, I pleaded--none too coherently--with God to "JUST make her go to SLEEP--please--and keep her ASLEEP UNTIL 7AM. I'll even give you 6am. Just PLEASE." (That first please was an afterthought. I was not being polite.) I really wanted God to help her feel better, of course--she was so uncomfortable!--but what was behind the desperation in my voice was that *I* really wanted to feel better, aka asleep.
The next day it occurred to me that I had prayed for the wrong thing. To be fair to myself (and also still dramatic), I was like that person stranded in rising floodwaters grasping for whatever floating thing--chair, automobile tire, cow--happened to glide by, too traumatized by the experience of near-drowning to care whether that object was really the most appropriate avenue to get me out of my current situation. So I'm not beating up my sleep-deprived self. It's just that I realized that instead of praying for God to change Little Bit, I should have been praying for God to change my response to her--praying for patience, compassion, and a little bit of emotional detachment and perspective to help get me through what would certainly be a short-lived, albeit unpleasant, episode in my child's life.
I think when we ask God to internally move something within us instead of externally changing our circumstances, it's a lot more likely that we'll get what we ask for--and that our relationship with God will be better off, since our attitude towards Her/Him?It won't depend on whether our situation changes, or changes as quickly as we'd like.
You'd think that since I just preached a sermon on this very thing last week, I would have remembered it at 2...3...5am that night. But I'll tell you a secret: pastors often preach on the thing they themselves most need to hear and re-hear.
Good thing God's parenting scorecard doesn't look like this:
Leah: +1; oh wait THAT was a step backwards, -2; oh good job she got it right this time, +5; oh wait no it looks like she totally forgot what I was trying to show her AND she's yelling at her baby, -17...
but more like this:
Love: 1,203,596,302,457,267,039,456,172,439,245,409,203,126,374,592,948,32...
Amen.
*Doesn't that phrase just drive you up the wall sometimes? I mean in the big scheme of things it's true but in the middle of a meltdown it ain't really relevant because, well, things are tough NOW. /end rant
**Before you call the feminist police on me for reinforcing gender stereotypes about women being all dramatic and men being all stoic and practical, I would like to point out that this is not our usual relationship dynamic; in fact quite often I am the calm, reassuring one. Really.