Standing in the Dark

It’s a bit of a cliche, learning about God from parenting. God isn’t mad at us when it takes us time to learn, just as we’re not mad at babies when they fall down learning to walk. We don’t always understand why pain is necessary, just as babies don’t understand why we’re giving them shots. 

It’s a cliche, but it’s what I find myself thinking about it a lot these days. 

Molly nurses herself to sleep most of the time, but when that doesn’t happen or when naps don’t line up with eating, wo unto us all. 

To get her to sleep, we wrap her up in a boba, turn a sound machine on, wander around the house until she starts leaning her head against us, and then go into the bathroom, where it is pitch dark, and sing to her until her entire body is so relaxed that her head moves side to side when we sway. It is a process. 

Molly is prone to object to various stages in this process, as they prevent her from doing her favorite things: wiggling, putting things in her mouth, and making eye contact. She is particularly unhappy if you take her into the dark bathroom before she is ready. 

The other day I was swaying in the bathroom with her as she yelled, and I thought, “I would also prefer not to be in this bathroom right now. But I go everywhere you go, and you need to be here.”

And, of course, there was the metaphor, packaged and waiting. He goes everywhere I go. Some of the places are not fun; some of the places are miserable, and I am prone to yell at him that I don’t want to be there. And, I think, He who feels all my sorrows and pains, would also prefer to not stand in the dark. 

“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the world,” our Lord tells us in Matthew. 

Molly has had a feeding tube since she was born, which means a whole bunch of things, like it’s pretty hard for me to make time to eat, what with breast feeding her, pumping so that she’ll have milk, and tube feeding her. It means that a couple of times a week, Austin and I have to shove a plastic tube down her throat and tape it to her very red cheek, still sore from the last time she yanked it off. It means that wherever I go, I have to bring all sorts to mechanics to make sure she’s fed, that I’m constantly worried about her weight gain, that I take her to as many as three doctors appointments a week. It means the majority of her beautiful baby pictures will not show her whole face, which doesn’t matter, of course, but makes me sad anyway. 

I would prefer not to be here, and I’ve spent a lot of time asking for relief, which I’ve gotten in all sorts of ways that were not the way I was hoping for. Classic God.

I think my Heavenly Parents would also prefer that I not hurt, and I don’t know why they who formed the universe haven’t decided to strengthen Molly’s swallowing muscles or relax her gag reflex or whatever it is that needs to happen, just as I don’t know why there is cancer or depression or so many people dying and grieving the dying in Israel and Pakistan and Ukraine and Russia and lots of other places not on the news. 

Whatever the size of our hurts, for whatever reason they are and allowed to continue, the only thing about them for sure is that God suffers them with us, because He goes wherever I go. Here’s God, standing in the dark with me.