What My Children Taught Me About God

     In spite of my earlier assertions that the great wisdom I have to share is going to waste since I am rarely asked to give devotions, (I'm unasked, therefore I blog) I have actually spoken at two baby showers.  I was only asked to speak at one of them, I was in charge of the second and I was the easiest person to draft for devotions.  Many women share how to teach your child about God and that is certainly a good thing, but I spoke about the things my children taught me about God.  Naturally, my first living theology lesson came with my firstborn.  Baby manuals led me to believe that my newborn would sleep most of the time, but my daughter was too young to read the manuals and so was awake more than she was asleep.  That would have been fun except for the fact that for the first two months of her life, if she wasn't eating or sleeping, she was fussing.  It wasn't colic or some other insistent fussing, but persistent fussing nonetheless.  Frankly, I was not getting a lot out of the relationship.  What I learned from my tiny theologian was unconditional love and hope.  My love for her did not depend on her behavior and every night as I put her to bed I hoped the next day would be better.  A couple months later it was.
     I learned two poignant lessons from my second child.  When my son was a preschooler we lived in a house with a detached garage and on one my many trips to the garage with the detritus it requires to take children anywhere, he started screaming, "Mommy don't leave me".  Aloud I was murmuring reassurance but inside I was thinking "You dumb cluck.  What in your experience with me causes you to think I would ever leave you?"  Then God zapped me with the memory of the many times I questioned His presence with me after many years of experiencing only faithfulness.  "Connie, my forgetful child, (the spiritual way of saying you dumb cluck) what in your experience with me causes you to think I would ever leave you?"  Got it, Lord.
     The second lesson came when my son was 8 years old.  Unknown to me, at a relative's house he had watched a movie he knew he wasn't allowed to.  Several days later, after I tucked him in bed he called me back to his room and tearfully confessed what he had done and how much some scenes had bothered him.  Would I please forgive him? I was thrilled that at such a young age he was sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to recognize his sin.  I was delighted to forgive him.  Until this time I had looked at God's forgiveness as a spiritual equation, we input confession and God inputs forgiveness, a transaction he completes because he promised to.  This experience helped me realize that God is as pleased with our sensitivity to his Spirit as I was to my son's.  He doesn't have to forgive us, he delights to forgive us.
     The hardest lesson I learned from my children was letting go.  This was an ongoing lesson as my children spent more and more time away from me but high school graduation is what hammered it home.  The year my oldest was graduating we were studying Matthew in BSF and I got to see how Christ prepared for separation from his disciples.  As a Christian mother I was feeling compelled to tip my daughter's head back and pour everything she needed to know down her throat, to dump the whole theology truck on her, but I noticed that Jesus gave his disciples only what they were able to understand.  I also noticed that immediately after they finally got the very first thing they needed to know about Jesus, who he was, he started preparing them for his departure.  Jesus had to do the same thing we do, teach them what he could and trust the Holy Spirit to take it from there.  Of course omniscience would be handy as we release our children, but I don't think Jesus was relying on his omniscience.  For the most part Christ deliberately handled life with the same tools that are available to us, in this case, trust.  He could leave his newborn followers because he trusted God to finish what he started.  I learned to do that too.
     Remember story problems from math class?  I hated story problems, but the tests of life are nothing but story problems.  And so I learned theology 101 from my three living lessons.  Those principles have stuck with me much longer than anything I was taught in theology class in Bible college.  This theology is fixed in my mind because it is attached to my dearest memories, my children.