You can't rush the common cold (in which this really has nothing to do with the cold)

9:15 PM

Elijah's sick. His first time being sick ever. This is some sort of milestone, right? Maybe that's not the right word. A right of passage for me as the mama? Sure, it feels like it at least. I've never actually felt so helpless since he's been born. I'm putting saline drops in his nose, propping his head up when he sleeps, nursing him "up hill", etc but there's really nothing I can do to actually fix this. It's a common cold that must run its course. Last night was pretty awful. He woke up as much as normal but could hardly nurse so he wasn't able to go back to sleep as fast. Somewhere around 4 am when Elijah literally refused to nurse (shook his head every time I offered) I laid him back down on the pillow and Kaleb and I listened to him cry. There was nothing else we could do. He didn't want us to touch him, he didn't want to nurse, he didn't want his soothie. He just cried.

There it was. The picture clearly set before me in the form of my son and his cold. Funny how God speaks to mama's in the wee hours of the morning. This seemed familiar to me though the resemblance would have been hard for anyone else to see.

This looks like the moment I gave up.

Curled on the bathroom floor in my dorm, crying, sick, letting the night spill out and roll down the curves of my face. I didn't want it. Any of it. The life I was living, the way I felt night after night when all of the bad decisions were made and all I could do was hope that I had finally learned my lesson but knowing deep down that I hadn't. I felt the comfort and the peace trying to rush upon me but I shook my head in an act of refusal to feel better. He offered and I rejected time and time again. Sure, yea, God could have snapped His fingers and made my heart change before I could even pick myself up off the floor but how would I have learned? I had to want the change. I had to embrace him and decide to live differently. And I did not long after that night but how I got there is what makes it a testimony of how good my King actually is.

Sometimes I lose my patience with others especially when I'm the one discipling them or trying to at least (now I know how all the women felt who were trying to disciple me in my early years). I forget just how long it took me to reach back and finally allow God to fill me up. I forget the different moments that had to happen for me to finally see that it wasn't worth it. I think He also gently reminded me of this because it's so easy for me to forget how far I've actually come and how much work He is still doing. Even tonight I noticed it. When we were walking around Target I went straight to the swimsuit section and started looking at some very tasteful and cute one piece suits. I've never done that before. Modesty is a new territory for me in which I hadn't embraced until after Elijah was born. It wasn't something I strived toward when I first started my walk and I see that more and more as my life shifts and changes; He teaches me new things every day. In the moments that I'm still enough to listen, He speaks. In the moments of true surrender, He molds. They aren't as close together as I should allow them to be but they happen. And so I remember to walk this out, these thoughts and desires. I remember to walk and not run sometimes because

You can't rush greatness. 

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