Seeing God in Everything

I read this poem in my devotions recently (while sitting on the couch in damp workout clothes, nursing Esther, and pausing to explain a math problem to Micah . . .) 

“SEE GOD IN ALL THINGS, great and small,

And give him praise what’er befall,

In life or death, in pain or woe,

See God and overcome your foe . . .

Life will, indeed, a blessing bring,

If we SEE GOD IN EVERYTHING.”

A.E. Finn

As I read this poem, I couldn’t help but wonder: why don’t I see God in everything?

The heart-honest truth is this: it’s hard to SEE GOD in the day-to-day “pain and woe” of midnight feedings, bad attitudes, sibling spats, failed homeschool days and hurtful words spoken in stressed-out-anger.

During weary mothering moments, I’ve preached to myself: I don’t see God in everything because I’m blinded by selfishness!  

But even after preaching “don’t be selfish, don’t be selfish . . . ” through out the day, I still fall into bed at night body-weary and soul-weary.

Then a couple evenings ago, while our kiddos ran around the back yard chasing bouncy baby crickets, I chatted with my neighbor, Jana. As we chatted, I sat in a green lawn chair patting Esther’s back. Watching my hand pat-pat-patting, Jana said, “I think mothering is the most unselfish thing you could ever do. I mean—you give up sleep, food, money, hanging out with friends, and all to raise a kid.”

I replied: “Yes, good mothering requires selflessness, but I’ve found mothering shows me over and over again how selfish I really am—I don’t like giving up sleep, time, or brain cells!”

But as Jana and I watched our kiddos run red-faced through the grass, as we listened to high-pitched-squeals of delight when they snagged a kicking insect leg, when they ran with wriggling insects between fingers to where we sat on lawn chairs and stuck kicking bugs under our noses saying: “Look! A cricket!” a verse popped into my mind:  “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11b).

My heart-eyes opened as I realized:  I’m trying to see God by focusing on Self! All day long I preach “don’t be selfish” and I miss the God-Beauty around me because I’m still the focus!

My focus must be outward and upward rather than inward!

My children—in spite of bad attitudes, screaming fits, and messes—reflect God’s beauty! They reflect his beauty as they catch insects (and let them loose all over my living room floor!), as they fight over who gets to feed baby Esther her bottle, as they learn a new concept in school, as they chase each other round the playground shooting each other with “super-hero” lasers.

Beauty: Three Boys Feeding Baby Esther

And there’s soul-purifying beauty in midnight feedings and newborn fussiness because there’s Beauty in focusing on the needs of my little girl rather than whining about my lack of sleep or inability to complete my tasks.

So, to change my focus from Self to God, I must bend my knees and pray this:

“One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4).

God is Beauty and his temple is everywhere!

Lord, grant me the eyes to see Beauty—to see You—in everything, especially the hard things.

Above: More Beauty: Boys Hunting For Crickets Below: Catching Crickets

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In Hard Times--Lean

“Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?” (Song of Songs 8:5).

Micah “sent” me a note last night—sealed it in an envelope and handed it to me while three-week-old Esther wailed on my bouncing thighs. “I saw you cry, Mom, so I made you this,” he said. Patting Esther’s back with my right hand, I opened the white envelope with my left and pulled out the note written in green marker and accented with a smiley face and wavy lines: “be Happy even in hard times.”

It had been a hard afternoon, for sure. The hard part started when I picked up Micah from school. Micah stood on the curb, forearms extended with palms up, like a monk in deep meditation. His teacher said, “Micah was quite the vigorous monkey-bars climber today. He’s got some pretty bad blisters.” I stared down at Micah’s palms—yellow flesh hanging loose over raw, red skin. “It stings, Mom,” Micah said, grimacing.

“Well, I’ve had blisters like these, and they healed nicely. We’ll bandage them when we get home.”

We’re too much alike—Micah and I—always fighting to be the toughest, the fastest, the strongest on the playground, and in the adrenaline pumping moment of competition, we numb to pain. It’s only afterwards that the throbbing begins . . . .

After Micah hopped into the van and buckled in without touching raw skin, baby Esther began her I-hate-this-car-seat girl-wailing (which Jon swears is much louder and higher pitched than a boys!) Even after I drove home and pulled her sweaty-from-crying body out of the car seat, Esther kept on wailing, face red, legs kicking.

Once inside our cool house, Esther wailed on, but Micah’s raw palms needed tending, so I placed her in the pack 'n play. While I snipped tape and gauze, my head began throbbing in time with Esther’s wails. Fifteen minutes later, Micah’s palms bandaged and taped, I picked Esther up and held her close, but she beat my chest with curled fists, as if to say, “why did you leave me?!”

With fist-beating baby in arms, I stepped into the bathroom and discovered my potty-training three year old dropping his Lightening McQueen pull up—full of poop—onto the tile floor. He’d also left a little trail of deposits round the house, just for me.

So I put screaming Esther back in the pack 'n play. As I scrubbed the three-year-old’s poop smeared legs, scooped up deposits from the carpet, and carefully wiped down the fabric loops on the green rug in the boys’ bedroom, the throbbing in my temples began pounding in tandem with Esther’s now operatic screaming.

Clean up complete, I picked up Esther’s squirming body and stuck the green hospital paci in her open mouth. She arched her back, spit green paci on the floor, beat fists against my chest, and wailed at a higher decibel.

For the next two hours, I bounced, squatted, back-patted, nursed, and changed Esther while yelling at the boys to “go in the basement and be quiet!” When every muscle in my still anemic body gave out, I sat down at the kitchen table, slung Esther over my knees and cried. Micah—unbeknownst to me—witnessed my little meltdown, and that’s when he wrote and ‘sent’ his note: “Be happy even in the hard times.”  

There’s something sweet and oh so humbling about receiving sage counsel from your eight year old son.  It’s not easy to “be happy in the hard times” because my selfish self would rather the hard times just “go away already!”

When Esther finally stopped screaming, the boys scavenged up a dinner of corn chips, string cheese and tomatoes. Then I put everyone—myself included—to bed, hoping a little sleep would help me “be happy in the hard times.”

Then in early morning light I read in my new devotional, Streams in the Desert:

God said:

Child of My love, lean hard.

And let me feel the pressure of your care;

I know your burden, child. I shaped it. . .

Even as I laid it on [you], I said,

“I will be near, and while she leans on me,

This burden will be mine, not hers.

So I will keep My child within the circling arms

Of My Own Love. . .”

You love me, [child] I know. So then, do not doubt,

But loving me, lean hard.  (Streams in the Desert, 347 emphasis mine).

All too often, just like my monkey-bar climbing son, in hard times I “vigorously” lean on Self. Doubting God’s goodness and care, leaning on my own strength, I grow throbbing blisters on my hands and in my heart.

So, the next time my son injures himself while my baby screams and my three year old poops all over the floor, (or we have a bad school day, or I feel the pain of not having a "normal" family, or __________) I pray I remember to Lean Hard on Him who holds me in His Loving Arms.

For only in His Loving Arms can I be “Happy even in hard times.”