Category Archives: Parenting

Ready… Set…

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Birgitta has been abundantly blessed by others who have supplied all she’ll need to get started mothering her baby girl. She’s completely ready.

Cousin Emily sent 8 monster-sized bins of goodies, along with a stroller, car seat, exer-saucer, play mat, and lots more. Birgitta’s work cohorts surprised her with a luncheon at Redamak’s Restaurant, showering her with added gifts, and last weekend another group pooled their resources to buy her a leather-look glider-rocker with matching ottoman.

Though Baby Nyman isn’t here yet, her mommy is ready.

Now, 2 days from her due date, Birgitta wakes up each morning wondering, “Is today the day?” But that’s a secret God is still keeping. Astoundingly, he’s kept it for a long, long time, from even before he’d made the first human. Way back then, though, he already knew Birgitta’s daughter.

Something else mind-boggling is that this little girl will, herself, be looking for God. Part of his forming her has been to shape her heart and mind to feel a need for him, a kind of mysterious awareness of her Creator that God tucks into each one of us before we’re born. Some people call it a God-shaped vacuum. Whatever it is, it’s an innate sense of things eternal.

I don’t pretend to understand all this. Scripture says, “God has planted eternity in the human heart,” but right after that it says, “Even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”

I’m glad that was added, because it relieves the stress of trying to make sense of everything God says. He’s ok with us just believing it’s true because it’s coming from him. That’s good enough.

Neither Birgitta nor I understand all that’s happened within the heart and soul of her unborn child, and I’m thankful God has taken responsibility for it. By comparison to what he’s been doing, her preparation has been easy. It started with a list and ended when each item was checked off:

  1. The room has been redecorated and reorganized.
  2. The clothes are in the drawers.
  3. The hospital bag is packed.
  4. The diapers are stacked next to the wipes.
  5. The car seat is in the car.
  6. And the bassinet is empty, ready for its occupant.

But better than all that motherly readiness is that God is ready… well, at least 99.9%. As Birgitta testified in her blog post (A Word from Birgitta), her little girl is part of an “intentional and purposeful design set into place by an omniscient Creator.” And part of his intention is to keep the baby inside the mommy until he’s 100% finished with his pre-birth preparations of this little one.

When he’s ready, Birgitta will get a look at what’s he’s been up to during the last 9 months…. and will meet her baby.

“You saw me before I was born. You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:16,13)

A Word from Birgitta

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I’m probably not the only one who took for granted the incredibly brilliant and creative design of pregnancy until it happened to me. I’ve experienced many physical changes over the past 8½ months and I have been awed to learn about what has gone on within me. It has completely changed my perspective on God and his involvement in my life.

Faith does not come naturally to me. I am a person who has always been prone to doubting and questioning God. For a long time I floundered between believing that He was vaguely aware of my life from a distance and that He did not exist at all. When I did acknowledge His presence, I related to him as subject to master, often feeling scolded and constantly skeptical of the notion that God is interested in the details of my life. Becoming pregnant has transformed my heart and mind.

I am glad to live in an age where an abundance of information about pregnancy is available. I imagine that women of ancient times were amazed at the process, but as the majority of the changes are internal, it seems that for the most part, the progression of pregnancy would remain a mystery. I am very thankful that I have the privilege of reading many detailed accounts describing the remarkable work my body is doing internally to bring another human into being. The new developments I read about each week never cease to astonish me. As of this week, 2 weeks from my due date, my baby’s miniature and incredibly complex organ systems are complete and her lungs mature.

I believe the processes of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are not the result of evolution, but are intentional and purposeful designs set into place by an omniscient Creator. The system for bringing forth new life could be different. Babies could be carried within the male body or they could grow from the ground. The familiar design of a new life growing within a woman for approximately nine months is the best design, and I love how it feels to be a part of something so wondrously ordained by God.

Colossians 1:15-17 affirms that God not only created everything in Heaven and on earth, but He continues to hold everything together. That thought is so beautiful to me. Generations upon generations of the human race do not stay alive without the hands of God being continuously involved. This is why I believe that He is intimately involved in what is happening within me. It would be impossible for me to deny His existence or His interest in our finest details now. My pregnancy has given me evidence of the unseen, and for that I will be forever thankful.

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17)

 

I don’t know.

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When I was a young mother, I wanted with all my heart to give good answers to the questions my 7 children asked, especially their questions about God.

When they asked and I didn’t know the answer, I responded with what I thought was an answer. And if I couldn’t come up with that, I just made it up, but of course it was done with sterling intentions. Every answer was given with a desire to make God so appealing, they couldn’t help but love him.

The problem was, I wasn’t always feeding them info that had come from the Bible. An even greater travesty, though, was that by answering all their questions definitively, I was giving them the impression God could be fully understood. Despite him telling us we can’t know everything about him, I was acting as though I was the one exception to that, and had him all figured out.

Even writing that sentence makes me tremble.

Although God is never at a loss for answers, we need to admit that we can be. Take these tough questions, for example, from children:

  1. Will I have my same name in heaven?
  2. How can hell be dark if there is fire there?
  3. Why do people get mad if Jesus is in their hearts?
  4. Were there dinosaurs on the ark?
  5. Why does God love people?

When I was asked these kinds of things, I’d launch off with a babbling non-answer that left the kids confused and me, too. The best (and most honest) response would have been, “Honey, I wish I could answer that, but I just don’t know.”

James Dobson always said parents are a child’s first model of God. Our youngsters watch us carefully and buy into what we say and do as absolute truth. Without even realizing it, my non-answers were leading them away from him instead of toward him.

God is willing to take a chance on us when he entrusts us with children to raise, but he knows it’s a challenging job and doesn’t give them to us without offering to co-parent. When we answer our children with a straightforward I-don’t-know, I believe God will fill in whatever blank is in their minds with exactly what what they need to satisfy the question. After all, he says those who sincerely seek him will find him, and no questioner is more sincere than a child.

Surely God is pleased when we honestly speak an I-don’t-know, because that represents a “yes” to his mysterious divinity. What seems like an inadequate answer can be an arrow that simultaneously points to our limitations and his limitlessness. In other words, answering a question with I-don’t-know can actually be lifting God high, a quiet acknowledgement of his complicated, unexplainable supremacy.

And when I see it that way, an I-don’t-know turns out to be a pretty good answer.

“Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand… his ways!” (Romans 11:33)