Serious Sunday

I'll be brief (HA! I mean as brief as I can be). Ezra's been sleeping poorly. And by that I mean, like last night: he woke up 5 times from 3:30-5, and then came into bed with us, where he rolled around until 6:30 and Stephen held him down in his crib until he went to sleep. But he just woke back up 5 minutes later, so I spent the rest of the night sleeping on the floor in his room with my arm in his crib.You know he climbed out of his crib, so we can't ever let him cry, even though he's just being stubborn about sleep (so it seems? Anybody know of a reason why an 18 month old would be awake - not ready to play awake, just not going to sleep - for 1-3 hours every night for over a week?).

I've been pretty complainy about it to the Lord. I mean, who wants to be this tired? I really have to watch my driving because I'm just not very safe anymore. I have to focus, or I get dangerous. So we were talking about God's discipline this morning during the worship time, and I was reminded - God doesn't lose patience with me, even when I'm being really slow to learn something, or even when I'm being stubborn in giving in to him. He's just persistent, to the bitter end he persists with me.

This season is unpleasant, and he let me know it's okay to admit that. But I don't get to complain about Ezra's difficulties with sleeping anymore. I need to take it as an opportunity to grow in patience because God knows I need more. I mean, I also know in theory that I need more, and I kind of want more patience, but I don't really want to go through the season required to grow that patience, you know?

But God reminded me, as I started to go into my old routine of thinking of obedience as a leash that gets shorter or a collar that gets tighter: he's not like that. He's a good dad. Good parents discipline their kids so that they can move into a greater freedom with the ability to be responsible with it. Ezra gets disciplined when he runs away from me because he could be hurt or killed if he ran away at the wrong time. Once he learns to stop when I say, "Stop!" then he can have more freedom - maybe to walk in the parking lot or something like that.

I guess what I mean by all that is that I sometimes get into a rut of thinking that God grows my character just so he can throw harder things onto my back. But I think I have it backwards. God knows that this is the easiest it's going to be maybe until I die. Who knows, maybe I'll have times when life slows down and I'm rested and things are tranquil, but I just kind of doubt it. I think life just gets harder because that's what life does here, and God wants me to be ready to walk in freedom, and to handle that freedom responsibly. He wants for my future to not be so burdensome as it will be if I don't grow now. He doesn't want to turn me into a circus animal who just does whatever he says when he says it; he wants me to not be a toddler for the rest of my life! I [sometimes] want that too.

For now, we're transitioning Ezra into a "toddler bed" (which, around these parts, means a mattress on the floor) tomorrow. I'm sure I'll have some stories to tell this week!

Oh, and he also said "grass" and "up" today. And he tried to say "robot" but was unsuccessful (bobo? Not a word). It's exciting to hear him speaking after so long of not understanding annnnything. Luckily we still aren't developed to the point of getting frustrated with Mommy for not understanding toddlerspeak.