The Thoughts of My Heart

“May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be pleasing to you, O God, my rock and my redeemer.” (paraphrase of Psalm 19;14)

I speak those words to myself almost every morning as I’m getting out of bed. Some days they are just a brisk reminder as I slip on my flip flops and other days, like this day, they are a desperate plea. To be loving and kind. To be patient and gentle. To be somewhat coherent. To not yell. To not be critical or hypocrital. To not be a person I never wish to be. A plea for my words and my thoughts to be the Lord’s and not my own.

There are bad nights of sleep and there are nights when you really don’t think you got any sleep at all. When you want to go out the next day and purchase an “I survived the great nocturnal disaster of 2017” t-shirt. Nights you used to say were in the top 10 of worst nights ever before you had so many that you simply lost count. Last night would be in the running for that prize if we were still keeping score.

Zeke’s sleeping habits have greatly improved over the past few years. Well, in our minds anyway – he doesn’t really seem to care if he sleeps or not. He didn’t for almost the first two years and then started getting enough sleep for us to groggily make it through each day with our memories somewhat intact. For the past couple of years, we have survived on coffee and thankfully, more rest. But at any given time, without rhyme or reason, we are taken back to the early years and treated to an all-nighter.

Some nights are comical, such as 2 am jumps and crashes on our bed with the announcement “I am a NINJA!” No, little master of the undisguised, you are certainly not a ninja. Some are really endearing, such as when he lays his head by his dad’s and says “I love you, daddy” and later next to mine and says “I love you, mommy.” If those sweet nothings didn’t occur between 2 and 5 am, they really would be more heartwarming. Some nights are just annoying, such as when he talks incessantly, thrashes around next to us, repeatedly smacks me in the face with his blanket, takes the throw pillows and uses them as missiles. You get the idea. And I’m sure you’re wondering why we are running such a circus over here.

The short answer is Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. The long answer is, of course, more involved. Suffice it to say gone are the days of the Tot Clock that plays cutesy tunes and has lights that turn colors to indicate that it’s time to stay in bed or get up. That was a brilliant purchase for our typical girls, so much so that the almost 10 year old still refuses to pass it along. Gone are the days of consequences for refusing to obey us when we command sleep. Sure we have some consequences in place for Zeke’s behaviors, but they are immediate and short. The sad thing is, the fetal alcohol brain does not retain cause and effect long enough for lengthy consequences like “stay in your own bed and be quiet all night or you don’t get a cookie tomorrow” to be effective. Gone are the days of reward charts for the same reason. So, when Zeke refuses to sleep, it boils down to two choices: listen to him scream and crash around his room all night or bring him into our bed where he is usually calm and content, and sometimes sleeps. Either way, the adults involved are awake for the long haul.

Then some nights, such as last night, we also get to face the preteen struggles head on. The ones that always seem to pop up at bedtime or after and are so pressing they cannot possibly wait until the morning. I fully remember those days myself and have much compassion for our daughter who is going through them now, but that compassion wanes just a bit around 2:30 am when we are sitting on the floor of the bathroom discussing anxious thought patterns. It just does. Throw in the fact that she has already woken me up a couple of times, and I’m left grasping for words that are full of truth and love. Truth to displace the lies of anxiety and love to replace the fear.  All the while just wanting her to go to sleep already.

So when I get 3 or 4 hours of sleep on any given night and am pretty sure I was designed for 8, I plead for help: I need you, Lord, I need you. To give me grace to get through this day in a way that honors you. To give me patience and gentleness with my kids. To love them like you love them. To treat them like I love them. To press forward when I’d rather retreat. Back into bed, under a rock, into my coloring tent for those who have seen that meme. It is a plea to live a life worthy of the calling to which I have been called – a follower of Christ, a wife, and a mother. Today. It is a plea to do that well.

Although the alternative seems better in the short run, it isn’t an option to displace responsibility for selfishness. I may not have been raised with x, y and z like so and so, or perhaps I don’t even have as many perceived advantages as they do now, but I cannot just throw in the towel and say it isn’t fair to expect me to be different than I am and I can’t change. I know many have challenges I have never faced, whose kids are hurting and marriages are failing, but the same principles are true for all of us. My heart breaks for those who are living in such fear and pain; for so many who are in need of the hope only Jesus can give. But we cannot stay stuck.

I remember when I was a kid and every other kid in art class had the box of 64 Crayola crayons. The awesome one with the built-in sharpener on the back. It is one of my first memories of covetousness. Crayons must have been really expensive circa 1978, because my mom said we couldn’t afford the box of 64. I got the box of 48 instead. But guess what? The art teacher still made me do all the same art projects the other kids had to do. I didn’t get an easier version because I had less crayons. I just had to be a little more creative and it took a little more time. And there were kids who had to be more creative than me because they only had 24. It was rough.

This is obviously an over simplified illustration for life, but the point is we don’t get to choose what we are given. We don’t get to pick the things we deal with in our lives or don’t.  We don’t get a pass because we don’t feel equipped. And we don’t get to say we don’t want the hard stuff, because like I told my preteen daughter last night, it is the hard stuff that makes up life. It is the hard stuff that will always be there and it is the hard stuff that will define us. The hard stuff is what God uses to make us into the people he wants us to be. We have to be willing to do the work, perhaps more creatively than others and perhaps it will take a lifetime, but we have to do it in order to live our lives well for him.

I’ve known a lot of moms though various churches or bible studies over the years who have seemingly sweet little, obedient babies who will lay on a blanket when their moms need them to play quietly on their own. It always astonished me a bit because I never had one of those. In some way, shape or form my kids seemed to look at that blanket and say “screw you” as they screamed their heads off or crawled right off. I once laughingly shared this with an acquaintance and she quipped “We get the kids we need, don’t we?” Yes. I never got a blanket baby. I got the kids I need. The kids who will keep me up at night and make me go through the hard stuff. The kids that will make me use every ounce of creativity in my being to make it through some days. The kids that will make me plead to the Lord and know it is only by his grace that I will live well the life he has given me to live.

Sometimes what we are given doesn’t seem fair, but we really don’t want fair, do we? No, we don’t. We really want what we need.