Pity Parties

Yesterday, around 6 p.m., i had a good ol' cry, my legs tied up underneath me in the middle of my living room. Madeleine bumbled around the room, grabbing every free standing piece of... well, anything, to pull, yank, chew, you name it.

I informed God of my loneliness, in case He was wondering how I was feeling. I smartly asked Him why He seemed MIA at that particular moment, and pouted quite pathetically in His general direction. (Which is, I don't know, up?)

Madeleine tumbled her way towards me, swatting at my calves until I pulled her up onto my lap. It's never long that she lingers there. It's only a moment or two before she decides there's something better to see, smell, taste, fall on top of. But it was those brief moments of her tiny warm body in my arms, when I asked her, "No stay here with me. Where else do you have to go?" and I realized that God was asking me the same thing. He tends to do that — take small, meaningless things and turns them into whole heart revelations and parables of truth. I felt my heart sink, almost hearing God ask me, "Why are you always quick to leave? Where else do you have to go?"

I marvel at how much there is to learn about God by just having a kid myself. I see so much of her in me. When I start superimposing my relationship with Him on top of the way she interacts with me, I'm find the similarities embarrassing.

She only wants me when she needs something. She always has somewhere to go. I discipline her to protect her from her own ignorance. I allow consequences to befall her when I know it's the only way she'll learn. I want her to sit and just be with me. She always wants to crawl away and do something else. I want her to be happy, and when she cries, I want to cradle her because I love her. When things don't go as planned, I whisper that it will be alright. Kiss her. Hold her. Until she wiggles her way to her own freedom, even though I'm never more than two steps away.