I haven’t blogged in a while, so I feel a bit rusty. And my
words will probably come across scattered, repetitive and inconsistent, but I’ll try my
best J
I usually like to preface my entry with a little story. So
here it goes. I read, not too long ago, an interesting article about letting
your baby “cry it out.” I admit when Noah was younger, I was desperate to get
him on a schedule for the sake of my sanity at a time when Hunter was almost
never home. There was a particular day that I let Noah cry it out for 40 minutes
straight. That was also a day Hunter was coming home from the road, and he
happened to come home while I left Noah to cry it out. I was having a
break-down and begged Hunter not to intervene with what I was doing to Noah. He
insisted anyways and scooped him up, only to find him completely soaked in
sweat. Hunter held him and soothed him and decided to let Noah play instead of
napping because Noah wasn’t even tired! What a blessing, that God allowed
Hunter to walk in the door at a time when I was making a poor decision.
This article I read basically spoke against the belief that
making your baby cry it out is healthy. I won’t go into all the scientific
detail of what they claimed happens to the baby and their brain when the baby
is left to cry it out, but the article helped confirm my decision I made months
ago that I will not mother my child that way. I speak no judgement on moms who
have trained their baby by this method because I am sure it has worked quite
well. But I do know that my baby, in turn, suffered by this method. As the
article described, babies are absolutely 100% completely dependent on people to
take care of them. CRYING is, most of the time, their only way to communicate
to us. In whatever way they need us or need something, they show it by crying.
By leaving them to cry it out, their need becomes magnified.
Don’t get me wrong, when Noah decides he is wide awake in
the middle of the night, I will allow him to cry for 5 minutes, knowing it
helps make him tired. Or if he’s playing on the floor and has twisted into a
position he doesn’t like, I let him be frustrated for a few minutes so he can
learn to maneuver his way around. But other than that, his cries tell me
“Mommy, I need you.” And there is nothing more fulfilling than to be the one to
meet his needs and hold him and convey my love so he knows he can rely on me.
So it’s interesting that we don’t allow ourselves to do the same with God, our
Daddy, because we are, after all, completely dependent on Him just like a baby
is to their parent.
So that was my very long preface. Anyways.
This morning, in Jesus Calling, I read the following:
Let My love flow into you
continually. Your need for Me is as constant as the outflow of My love to you.
If you think about it, we really don’t go to the Lord as
much He offers Himself. And His offer is an everlasting offer. We know how to
meet the need of a child over and over again, but we don’t allow our needs to
bet met by God over and over because, I guess, we just forget. It’s a practice
He wants us to have so much, but we really never practice it at all.
We are needy all day, every day. We get sad, upset, angry
and void on a regular basis and rather than allowing God’s love to flow
continually, we’ve forgotten that flow is even there and reach for something
earthly or we reach for nothing at all.
I need God ALWAYS, every moment of the day. Our need for Him
is CONSTANT. But like I said before, I forget. I’ve cut His flowing love and in
moments of dependency, I run in circles, getting nowhere, when all I have to do
is find my way back to His love. It’s there- CONTINUOSLY. Everlasting. It’s a
waterfall that will never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever dry up. Ever.
It’s hard to admit, especially for someone who might be
proud of their independency, but we are just as needy as infants. But that’s
the beauty of our design! God created us for that purpose- to be quenched by
Him, as a child to a parent. To think we can overcome life on our own means we
will be “crying it out” all the dang time! Who wants to live that way? I
challenge you, as well as myself, to try returning to God today. Even in the
smallest situations. If someone makes a snide remark that boils you, if you
stub your toe and want to punch a hole in the wall (which I've done and don't recommend), if you have bad service when
you go to lunch, if you look in the mirror and hate the way your hair looks, if you miss your
traveling husband… go to the flow of God’s love. Lift up the prayer “Daddy, I
need You.” And allow yourself to meditate on how much your God loves you.
(p.s. there is really weird music/ads that play in the background whenever you look at my blog and I Have NO IDEA how to change that.... sorry!)
