Tired...perhaps...
Busy...aren't we all these days...
I'm trying to get up early to pray and journal and plan for my day, but lo and behold, I get into a groove and then the girls go through a phase where one or both of them seems to be waking regularly in the middle of the night...sometimes two, or three or four times...This week it has been little miss Ava and her bad dreams...
She is a tenderhearted child...more so than almost any other child I've met...She has crazy dreams about crocodiles trying to bite her arms and dinosaurs coming into our house. She wakes up a little freaked out...like four times last night...Scott and I are working on some coping mechanisms with her; praying, focusing on her teddy bears and blankets...
My favorite is Scott's offered coping mechanism...take the scary and make it silly...Such as, if you have a dream about a pirate and you wake up scared, imagine said pirate with lipstick and a tutu on and being chased around by a clown...or some other silly concoction of images.
She gets a kick out of this in the morning when she is telling us about her dreams, but at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night...lets just say it takes a little more convincing.
Different kids. Different seasons. Different tactics.
Ella...let's just say she'd be the one dreaming that she was going to take the pirate down with his own sword...and then she'd wake up laughing.
That's why I love what Lisa Whelchel says at the beginning of her book Creative Correction:
" As you well know, the parenting adventure is different with each child---and it's vital to recognize and adapt to your children's various temperaments, strengths, and weaknesses. Think of yourself as a sculptor shaping and molding the lives of your young ones. With each child, you may be working with a different medium. You could be endeavoring to form one youngster who appears as hard as marble. As an artist, you might use a chisel, hammers, even water, while scultpting your masterpiece. You may have another child who is more pliable, like clay. Even then, as a potter, you might use fire, a knife and your bare hands.
It doesn't matter what substance you're working with be it wood, ice, bronze, wax, sand, steel or foam. Each raw material requires a distinct combination of tools to strike the balance between respecting its uniqueness and steadfastly pursuing the potential beauty within."
I love this. I'm humbled by my responsibility in this. I'm grateful for a God who is bigger than my children's needs and who can guide me in loving them the way they need to be loved.
As a young teenage girl I LOVED Psalm 139 because of what it meant for ME...for my life...
As a mom I LOVE what Psalm 139 says because of what it means for my girls lives...
It means that even though I don't always know how to parent, what words to say, how to best quell the fears of my daughter's frightened heart, God does...Shortly after Ava was born we used a portion of this scripture at her infant dedication...I substituted her name....I just remembered this now, as I was rereading this verse...
For you eformed Ava;
you fknit her together in her mother's womb.
gWonderful are your works;
intricately woven in ithe depths of the earth.
in your jbook were written, every one of them,
Wow...if that's not a reminder about the master craftsman, and the beauty that He is in control...of these nutty seasons of life...of all that we need, wherever we'll be, and where we need to go. Of all we need to learn about parenting and loving...All we need to do is trust...
Now...I need to trust that I'll remember all of this at 3 a.m. when Ava starts yelling for us and I'm bleary eyed and kicking my husband in the shin to figure out whose going to go into her room...
I'll try my best. I promise.
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