Restless Child
We'd been sitting for a couple of hours when she suddenly asked "how much longer are you staying?" At first I thought "okay, are you ushering me onward?" But she interjected my mind's wonderings with the fact that she had left her daughter at preschool and was meant to pick her up half an hour prior. Asking me if I could stay a little while longer and watch her baby whilst she ducked down the road, I agreed and she catapulted out of the house with sheer speed.
Well. Tommy had been asleep, but when the front of the car scratched the driveway as she reversed out of the garage, he woke up with a sudden wail and I audibly thought "okay, God. Let's do this." I wandered in to where he had been asleep in his cot and there he was - face pressed up against the bars with a bewildered frustration and confusion on his face. I lifted him up, tried to reassure him that even though mum couldn't be there, I was. But he was relentless. I felt helpless, I felt... like God.
Like God? Hear me out.
It was at that moment I had an impression from Him. "Now you know what it's like, huh?"
I had a sudden recognition of how precious life is. Here is this little innocent thing in my arms - so distraught, so upset, so confused. And I recognised firstly how much of a beautiful and intense thing it is to be a parent, but also the amount of pain and sorrow God goes through knowing that He is there to calm us, to give us love, to serve us, and yet He is rarely recognised by us - whether it be in the grand scheme of "belief" or, if we are Christians, those times when we say we believe in God but our refusal to seek His care, to recognise His healing power, to acknowledge Him as our Father and the One that wipes away tears and calms our fears says otherwise.
The anxiety that I felt not being able to reassure Tommy that everything was okay is exponentially experienced by our Father in heaven. And at that realisation, I looked to heaven with Tommy in my arms and let out a gigantic "phwoarh...", being convicted instantly of times in my life presently when I don't see God for what He is doing and willing to do in my life to protect me and keep me wrapped in His arms. I refuse to acknowledge His reassuring words (in the Bible and in my daily walk with Him), I refuse to "Be still and know that [He is] God." (Psalms 46:10).
Immediately, Tommy became quiet, his arms swinging around me as he let out a deep sigh and buried his face into my chest. It was like coming back to God. It was like the experience of prayer and being still, knowing that He is God. My heart was touched by the reflection of me in that child. That as a Child of God, I need to bury myself into the protecting and unfailing arms of my heavenly Father.
