Perspective

It is crazy in our little apartment today.   Snow is blowing around outside.  The laundry is piled way past the top of the laundry basket.  Toys are everywhere.   Dishes all over the kitchen.  Beds unmade ... and Little Two is sound asleep while Little One is sitting in front of the TV before lunch.  That never happens!   But today my perspective has been put in check.    As I look around at the tornado that has come through our home, my friend is holding her one week old little one for the last time.

She is hugging her.  Taking in her sweet newborn smells.   Singing and reading to her.  Listening to her soft noises.  That is what moms do.   In the beginning we can't get enough of our little ones.   They can do no wrong.   Sleepless nights don't bother us.    We get excited when they poop and pee.   We don't realize we are covered with spit up.   Why do we forget those feelings as they get older?    

As our little ones get older baby things become less cute.   They become mobile and our job becomes more difficult.   We can't just put them down with a toy because 5 minutes later they will be on the other side of the room pulling books off the shelves or making their way up the stairs. They begin talking and our job becomes infinitely more difficult!  At first we are amazed they are even forming words at all, and then those few words form sentences and paragraphs that challenge our authority and sanity.  

It's not really that baby things become less cute.   That is just what we tell ourselves.  It's that our little ones, our precious little ones, become more independent and that is scary.   Even though we, as parents, hope to raise independent little ones, we secretly hope a part of them will stay little forever.    We hope in some ways they will always need us, because in very real ways we need them.   Our little ones are our hearts walking around outside of our body.   The more they grow up, the less we can protect them, and we feel helpless.   When our little ones are babies we are in control.

But today I am reminded that really isn't true.   I am not in control.  I have never been in control.   My little ones are really not my little ones.  They are entrusted to me by their creator and God.   It is when I think about my friend holding her sweet daughter today that I am reminded of who my little ones really belong to.  At the end of the day they are sustained by God's power and protection, not my own.   At the end of the day they are God's precious little ones that He loans out to us for a short while ...