This is going to be my go-to post when my kids are making me want to pull my hair out, so if you ever see my vex-o-meter going up, please kindly refer me to this blog post. Take this thank you in advance for doing that, because I may not feel like saying thank you then!

“Please stop bashing that car, otherwise you’re going to spoil it”. Does my darling son listen and do as I request? Yeah, maybe for like 30 seconds…. just until I hear a banging noise, and someone coming up to me sniffling, with a broken-off piece of the said car in one hand… “Mummy, fix it, please fix it”. Cue me proceeding on my “did I not just say blah blah” rant, but in the end, I know I’ll probably still fix it.

Then there are also messes that I predicted would happen based on how a cup was being held, or a plate was being held, or a colouring pen/marker was being held (think re-designed clothes) ‎ etc. Yes, apparently I’m quite good at prophecy, because these predictions usually come to pass. Who would have thought that huh?! 🙂  Recently though, following one of such incidents, my son’s tearful “Mummy clean my mess”, struck me in a different way. It hit me right then that I do the same thing with God.

God tells us not to do something, we go ahead and do it, ignoring His Word, all cues, that still small voice, the nudging, warnings, advice from well-meaning people… and then we land ourselves in a mess, and of course, we turn to him and say “Clean my mess”, because, I mean, who else can do it like He can? While I may make my son play his part in cleaning up, there are sometimes I know this is a job for me, because any attempts by him to clean up on his own will probably make things worse.

There are also the times when I’ve had to convince him to try something that I knew he would like, but before he even tried it, his automatic response to “do you want it?” was “no”. I remember once when he was much younger, I asked him if he wanted ice cream and he said no. He actually said no. Who does that?!? Of course, when I finally convinced him to try it, a second invitation was definitely not needed.

Then I realise, I’m like that with God. He wants me to do something I’ve never done before. It looks new and slightly scary, so without even trying, my default response is “I don’t think I can do this”. I may not say this verbally, but I certainly act it. So God can nudge me to talk to someone new, or to do something different, but I feel it’s going to be too awkward, and so I end up not doing it. And who knows what could have resulted from such a conversation if I had listened? It could have resulted in an experience even better than ice cream, and yet, here I am, saying no.

Then there’s the classic procrastination that takes place when I tell my son to tidy up because it’s time to go to sleep. Sometimes I start telling him to tidy up an hour before he actually needs to, because I know he can drag it that long, maybe even longer. Oh, he has his excuses… “I’m not tired” , “I don’t feel like going to sleep”, “Why do you want me to go to sleep?”, “But I want to play”, “I’ve not finished playing”, “I’m not going to sleep today” etc etc. Then I have to get really strict to get things going (while probably also getting exasperated in the process, because, you know, repeating the same thing over and over does get annoying after a while).

But the truth is, I’m probably worse, and God has been far more patient with me. I guess a number of us are like that too. “Write that book”, “Start that project”, “Sing that song”, “Reach out to that person”, etc… and we drag and drag, because we are busy or afraid or unsure or whatever. We usually always have our excuses though, don’t we?

Then the questions, the number of “whys”. Oh Gosh. Almost everything I say these days is responded to with a “why?”. But then I realise my questions asking God why certain things happen are just as valid as/ not much better than his numerous questions, such as, in the scenario above, asking why he has to go to sleep. To him, at that point, he doesn’t even feel sleep is necessary, and he probably thinks it’s the worst thing I could ask of him, but I know he needs to sleep! (Even if he doesn’t, I certainly do!)

What about sharing stuff? We want our kids to learn to share, so immediately someone else wants something our child has, or if our child has two of a certain item (say, two cars), we ask them to share with someone else… “Give one to your friend/brother, be a good boy/girl”. And we get upset when they don’t want to share. But the thing is, sometimes we may also have more than we need, but we don’t share with those who don’t have. We always want the very rich ones to be the ones to share, they have ten cars after all, we only have two or three. Yes, we may deny this and say we have just enough, but then, that’s probably a child’s logic too, you know… “I also need two cars to play with, why does it matter if someone else doesn’t even have one?”

There are also the mistakes he makes as he learns… or the many times I’ve had to repeat an instruction over and over again before my son finally does as I ask without needing to be reminded. And then I have to remember‎…I don’t always get it right the first time either…I make lots of mistakes too, and there are also times I’ve needed multiple reminders. Again thankfully, God is far more patient with me than I am with him.

Then there are the times he wants to eat and he asks for food. I give him something to eat, and it’s not quite what he wants (with what I’ve given him being an actual proper meal, and what he wants, being, well… not quite such a ‘proper meal’). So he doesn’t want it. All of a sudden, he’s no more hungry. Which can be frustrating when you’ve taken time to prepare a decent meal. Plus, as the adult, I know that what I’m giving him will be better for him in the long run than what he’s asking for). But then, I think of the times I didn’t get answers to prayers in the way I wanted it, and how I felt about it. Imagine for instance that we pray (or sing) “God, draw me close to you”. So he sends us a challenge that will really draw us close to Him and make us strongly aware of our need for Him, and we grumble and get upset, because we really don’t want any difficulties. That was not really what we meant when we said we wanted to draw close to God you know… it sounded nice at the time, but this, this answer… it’s more than we bargained for! Even though it’s actually going to be better for us in the long run. It reminds me of a prayer I once saw: ‘Lord bless me with patience… not opportunities to be patient, I’ve had plenty of those and they don’t seem to be working. The actual patience…’

This does not mean we are not allowed to get upset when kids act this way, as that will be a tall order… we are human after all. But, thinking of it this way helps me to be more patient and understanding, to get where they are coming from…to not expect perfection. And ultimately to be a better a parent. Because I know how it feels you know… seeing as I’m just like them really.