Category Archives: Grandparenting

Dreaming of Chaos

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We all know God sometimes speaks to people in their dreams, or at least he used to. Just remembering Mary and Joseph brings a handful of examples to mind, since their God-given dreams directed their every move. Does the Lord still do that today?

Last night I had a heart-thumper. In the dream I was babysitting for all my grandchildren, having trouble keeping them straight. Although I knew who was who, I couldn’t remember which mother-instructions went with which child. I had a heavy toddler on my hip and a baby on my shoulder and was trying to put together a bottle with one elbow and my chin. I couldn’t remember, though, if I was supposed to use formula powder or regular milk.

When I looked at the two children I was holding, they were both asleep. Had they already been fed? Or did they fall asleep hungry? And who went into which bed? And which child was the bottle for? And was it really nap time, or should I wake them up? On and on my confusion swirled as the other 4 grands ran circles around me, begging for popsicles and M&Ms.

All of us have experienced real-life confusion that could rival that dream. A number of small glitches, surprises, or coincidences happening in quick succession can combine to create a major crisis. And the worst part is realizing it’s not a dream and that we do have to cope with what seems un-cope-able at that moment.

I find it interesting that the few places in Scripture where the word “confusion” appears, it’s either in reference to an attack from the enemy (“throwing people into confusion”), or an example of God forcing confusion on a group as punishment, sometimes labeled “a curse.” In any and all cases confusion is synonymous with misery.

I often joke about being confused, but according to God it’s no laughing matter. Instead I should work at eliminating it from my life. Although I don’t invite confusion, it seems to dog me anyway. Is it possible that ongoing inefficiency and poor planning might be the real culprits? Is my hiding behind the “I’m-just-confused” line a cover-up for pure weakness?

Actually Scripture teaches that it’s worse than that. In 2 Corinthians 12 we see “disorder” listed as one of 8 sins! “…quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.” (V. 20) Who knew?

If God was using my dream to speak to me, his message was one of two things: (1) babysit grandchildren one at a time, or (2) get rid of the confusion in your life.

In either case, I was glad that this time I could eliminate the chaos simply by waking up.

“Chaos calls to chaos, to the tune of whitewater rapids… Then God promises to love me all day, sing songs all through the night! My life is God’s prayer.” (Psalm 42:7-8, MSG)

Messy Business

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While visiting Linnea and family in Florida, it’s been fun renewing relationships with 3 year old Skylar and 2 year old Micah. Little Autumn, 2 months this week, has changed significantly since I saw her last, which was her birth week.

Children are fantastic, but they can also cause lots of trouble. They’re labor-intensive, expensive, loud, and worst of all, they create endless messes. Autumn, for example,  spits-up on shoulders and makes deposits in her diapers. But those messes are small-potatoes compared to her older siblings. Skylar and Micah? They’re in the mess-making big leagues.

Those two can dismantle a room in just a few minutes of creative play. They can also “help” an adult with a 5 minute project that later requires 40 minutes of clean-up. Making messes comes easily. Cleaning up is more like combat.

And then there are us adults. Even the big-league messes preschool kids make are nothing compared to the disastrous ones we get ourselves into with people. They begin slowly and aren’t usually visible to others, but months or years down the road, everyone sees.

Children make messes with sticky fingerprints, but we do something far worse when we let relationships get sticky. And just as children hate to clean up the messes they make, we find it difficult to tidy up our relationships. Picking up the pieces and putting them back together is something we don’t usually want to do, but if we let disheveled relationships go too far, the clean-up becomes twice as hard.

God describes himself as our heavenly Father, our parent, someone who urges us to make things right just like we urge Skylar and Micah to put a messy room back in order. We insist the children get it done, just as our Father pressures us until we do what we know is the right thing.

Today Skylar, Micah and I made a morning project of reorganizing all their plastic bins, putting each plaything back in its proper place. We retrieved puzzle pieces from the garage and plastic people from the yard. Books had been tucked in the play kitchen and necklaces under the couch. The orderly result was children enjoying a sense of accomplishment and fresh enthusiasm for rediscovered toys.

If we keep our relationships in order, the same thing will be true for us… especially if the relationship we’re working on is the one we have with God.

“Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” (Romans 5:11)

Working at It

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There’s nothing like young children to make sure their parents and grandparents are accountable to the truth. When we read them a story and try to shorten it by skipping a few words, they interrupt and point out we missed a line. If we promise to play hide-and-seek as soon as nap time is over, they don’t forget. And when we say we love them, they’re watching continually for a demonstration of that.

These dynamics are probably part of God’s teaching of parents and grandparents, this accountability-to-children factor. It becomes ongoing motivation for us to practice living responsibly. An added dimension of this is that God wants us to act with similar accountability toward him. Interestingly, sometimes he prompts it exactly as children do.

“You haven’t told the whole truth,” he tells us, “so your lie-of-omission will come back to bite you.” This echoes a preschooler’s comment, “You skipped a line of the story.”

Or God might say, “Didn’t you promise to talk to me at the beginning of each day?” When we promise, we should follow through… like we do with that hide-and-seek game after naps.

And just like little ones watch for our loving behavior toward them, God longs for that from us, in response to him.

Young children seem to love their parents no matter what. They generously give them the benefit of every doubt, even when parental behavior is neutral toward them or, amazingly, even when it’s abusive. Some of it might be need-based since they have no one else to turn to, but there’s also a component of brightly-burning hope that refuses to be snuffed out by contrary circumstances.

These two relational pieces, loving no matter what and brightly-burning hope, are also present in our bond with the Lord. When our behavior isn’t loving toward him or even borders on abusive, his response is still, “I’ll love you no matter what.” Additionally he sets up unnumbered opportunities for us to demonstrate our love to him, having a brightly-burning hope that our actions will reinforce our words.

God consistently uses earthly parenthood as a biblical image of his relationship with us, attempting to eliminate some of our confusion about him. He encourages us to call him “Father” and expects human dads to be ongoing models in relating to their children of how he treats them.

But God knows that’s a tall order. Just stretching toward it is all any parent needs to do to bring delight to the Lord. Although we ought to read the whole storybook, play that post-nap game, and act consistently in love, we can’t always do it.

When that happens, God understands. But he also hopes we’ll keep on trying.

“Your love has meant hard work, and the hope that you have in our Lord Jesus Christ means sheer dogged endurance in the life that you live before God, the Father of us all.” (1 Thessalonians 1:3)