“Pood! Pood!! Poooooodddd!”

She thinks the louder and longer she says it the quicker I will get her food.

A person can only be yelled at so much before they lose their mind. I get yelled at a lot, so needless to say, I lose it more regularly than I would like to acknowledge much less admit. But even here there is reason to celebrate. We have moved from sign language to speech out of her mouth. She is verbalizing her needs. She is recognizing that home, and the kitchen specifically, is where this need is met. She is coming to mama often to state said need.

This is growth and progress and connection. This is answered prayers and this is yet another opportunity to cry out to Jesus for help. Thank you for words, now please help me rejoice and not yell back in the face of a toddler.

We have turned a corner in a lot of ways. Everyone in this family is feeling more secure and less volatile. Things have settled in a lot of ways. Schedules and routines are more predictable. Attitudes and expectations are feeling more manageable. We are having more good than bad. We are feeling more hopeful and less desperate and I haven’t had a real, cry myself to sleep breakdown in months! If this isn’t victory, I don’t know what is. I’m reminded of Psalm 30:5 (b) “weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” I have cried a lot of tears, and probably will again sooner or later, but for now the morning has come and I am so very thankful! Our literal mornings have had more joy recently and the peace has covered even the hard ones filled with conflict and complaining. Good things are happening and I am rejoicing!

As I was preparing “pood” the other day I realized something lovely. I am not only tall enough to see the top of the counter and what’s happening there, but I know what’s coming next, because I’m in charge and I have a good plan. Baby girl, at my ankles yelling, doesn’t have that vantage point. She knows we are in the kitchen and this is where we get food, but she cannot understand why I am not giving it to her right now, this very moment! She doesn’t realize raw eggs are gross (unless mixed well into cookie dough, which they were not) and that the cheese she spied was going on her cooked eggs in a couple minutes. Does she need that? No. Does she love it? Yes. Do I love her and love giving her things that are both good and I know she will enjoy? Absolutely. So I gave her a tiny piece of cheese to calm her down and kept going.

And I saw Jesus so clearly in that moment. Here I am begging, crying, sometimes yelling and screaming for Him to give me things. But I’m down here. I don’t have His vantage point. He might very well be working on what I’m asking, but I can’t see and I don’t know what He’s thinking and what He has planned.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts then your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

I am His precious girl and He is my good Father. Just like I want her to wait for the food to finish cooking and to give her what her heart desires, He too is asking me to wait. He is helping me grow in patience and self control and trust. He knows my needs and desires better than I do so He knows how to fulfill them even better than I can imagine.

And He said we can ask and keep asking. He’s not even annoyed like I am. I loved reading Luke 18 last week and the parable of the persistent widow. Keep asking, over and over again, He’s not bothered. Which reminds me to keep going and also have some grace for these persistent children. They are audacious in their requests and absolutely relentless. Is this what He meant by childlike faith? They can hear no 100 times and still keep asking for the toy or candy or whatever else fits their fancy. What if I believed Jesus wanted to give me the desires of my heart as strongly as my children believe that of me? He has given me every reason to believe that. In my humanity and regular irritably I have not given my children that evidence, yet here we are being bombarded by their requests.

So I come to Him again and ask for more grace and more self control, and more gentleness and for the appellate court to hurry it up, and more speech, and more healing, and more attachment, and more rest, and more love! I may not be able to see what He’s cooking up, but I know it’s good and I’m going to keep asking for everything I want and rejoice in the blessings I’m snacking on in the mean time.