Funny Mom Comments, Why My Kids Put Me Down For Naps and God Talks To Hagar

Two of the best comments came out of my kids this week.  I had to write them down.  The first one came from my 9 year old who said I looked older than my Dad.  I almost choked.  My Dad is reaching a very big milestone this week, turning another decade and I actually do think he has aged extremely well, but do I really look 30 years older?  Please explain otherwise I'll have to run out and get some new moisturizer!!!!  We figured it out.....I have recently made the HUGE leap, and I mean HUGE, sooooo HUGE that I literally agonized for weeks if not months over what to do....do I continue highlighting my hair or, gasp, let it go naturally grey, which it has been doing on its own for years, but I've always hid it to some degree with highlights.  Well, it shouldn't be that big a deal, but it was, and with my husband's encouragment (truly his idea) and even my kids (they were all so kind), and my hairdresser (who was behind it all the time and was the one who said, "Go for it!"), I made the leap.  My 9 year old wasn't so sure he liked it.  "You're going to look old!" he said.   Oh well!  I think that was what hit me....I AM old!  Or at least older!  So I decided to stop fighting it.  There are lots of great grey hair verses in the Bible that I always glossed over.  I never liked them, now I'm ok with them!  Anway, that was where the "You look older than Gramps!" came in.  Apparently I have more grey hair than my Dad.  So, in conclusion, if you do decide to stop colouring your hair, apparently you'll age 30 years.  Sigh.....However, I've been joined by countless women who show up in social media and from what I can see I'm a part of the new trend to go grey naturally.  I have to say, there are days I don't love it, but for the most part, I'm ok with it and there is a funny freedom in making the decision, not to mention the hair budget has been literally erased.  So, that was comment one.  The next one is even better.

Yesterday I was up at a literally insane hour.  Awake at 4, I tried and tried to go back to sleep, but gave up at 4:30, so came down, exercised in the mudroom because one of my kids was sleeping on the couch (this is funny...because we had beans for dinner that night and he didn't want to gas his brother to death in the loft!  Haha!).  Then I did my news catch up, coffee, Bible reading, etc....and was doing great, lots of energy until about 12:30 or 1.  That was when I told the kids I was just going to lay down for a FEW MINUTES.  I had NO IDEA that I was going to sleep until 4:30!!!!!  I haven't done that in probably years!  I guess I was way more tired than I realized and must have gone into quarantine/coma mode.  When/if I do lay down it is always for 15-20 minutes, so I assumed that was what had happened.  I came downstairs and I was newly energized, making lots of noise, like a kid who has napped and was feeling good.  My kids started asking me what we were going to do for dinner.....what?!  I looked at the clock and my mouth dropped!  Where had the time gone?!  That was when everyone started floating into the kitchen saying things like, "There you are!  Where have you been?!"  Then, the best comment....my oldest daughter said, "It was so quiet when you were asleep!"  Ha!  Now I know where my crazy, busy, loud sons get it from  - ME!!!!  I was so completely awake after my hours long nap that I was bopping around the kitchen, joking, laughing, having a great, loud time and apparently the house had been quite quiet while I was asleep....we all laughed.  I guess the kid in me went for a nap, too, that day.  So glad I gave my kids a break!  Ha!  They should put me down for my long afternoon nap everyday!  Everyone thinks it's the toddlers who needs naps to give the parents a break.  Not here.  It's the kids who need to put down the crazy moms...it's the KIDS who need the break in our house.  I laughed a loooong time about that one.

But, back to the early hour.  I don't fight the early wake ups.  I'm quite convinced God has something to say to me in those early morning wake ups.  I actually start looking forward to what God is going to say.  And it was great.  Two passages jumped out at me.  One in Psalm 138 and the other was Genesis 16.

Psalm 138:7, "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life."  I had been feeling a certain degree of uncertainty as our work situation is stable to some degree, but we were recently told all of my husband's teaching will dry up as of next month as they are cancelling the program for the summer.  There will be financial impact starting in a matter of days.  We always want to be in a better financial situation, not worse.  However, this is where we find ourselves.  With the low lying stress in the back of my mind, I read that verse and the devotional I was reading focused on the phrase, "in the midst of trouble" meaning "right in the middle of it".  That was perfect.  God is in the middle of our trouble.  That's where He meets us and that was where I was.  I hung on to that.  The Psalm ended with this verse, "The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever."  So I spoke to my thoughts, wrote them all out and actively claimed those promises for myself.  We're actually kind of excited as having him around more in the evenings will free up time for us to farm, garden, plan, maybe do more side things.  It might work out in the long run better to have him home more, so perhaps a strange blessing?

Then in Genesis 16 I read about Sarai, Abram and Hagar.  Because they were so impatient to get God's promise of a son, Sarai felt she had to step in.  Big mistake.  Abram's big mistake was listening to Sarai, "And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai."  Oops.  But it follows the path of the curse, women desiring their husbands, or as I like to say, "desiring the role of their husbands".  And, Abram, also follows the curse of Adam and is passive not encouraging Sarai to be full of faith, but instead goes along with her scheme, which, of course, backfires and causes marital strife.  Sarai then has the nerve to blame Abram later, "May the wrong done to me be on you!"  What?!  It was HER idea!  But, that is the classic problem in marriage.  The woman takes the lead role, then starts resenting the fact her husband has become passive and then she blames him when all along it has been her fault for taking over!  Oh, the irony!  There you have it - Marriage Disaster Recipe 101 - what NOT to do.

Meanwhile, Hagar is now pregnant with Abram's child and Sarai is jealous and treats her badly.  Instead of supporting Hagar, Abram gives Sarai permission to be unkind, "...do to her as you please."  Not surprisingly, it says, "...and she fled from her."  Hagar ran away.  Who wouldn't?

This was the part that jumped out at me and I had never seen this before.  The angel of the Lord meets her and "found her by a spring of water in the wilderness".  He then tells her, "Return to your mistress and submit to her."  That was the line I had never seen before.  Go back.  The angel tells her to return.  It makes no sense.  Nothing was going to be different.  Sarai was still going to be the same unkind mistress.  But this is the key.....she wasn't supposed to leave until GOD told her to leave.  And this was when I started to put it all together.  It ties into the other post I wrote where being in the wilderness or the darkness is actually not a good thing, but a God thing.  Hagar left on her own accord, God never told her to leave.  It's not because it was going to get better there, but it's that God has a plan for everything, even darkness and hard times and difficult people and awful situations.  We are supposed to wait on God to get us out of them.  So, even though it probably made no sense, she is supposed to return to the difficult situation.  We are simply not supposed to "kindle a fire".  "Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God."  No kindling of torches, no walking by light we have created, no fleeing.  We are supposed to trust in God in our darkness.  Talk about the opposite of how we all feel in those situations.  It makes sense to want to run and get a flashlight!!!

But this is the neat part of the story.  She listens!  She obeys!  And I'm quite convinced it is in the obedience that she is blessed.  The angel of the Lord says to her, "I will surely multiple your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude."  Then Hagar responds to this and says, "You are a God of seeing".  How I love that phrase.  "Truly here I have seen Him who looks after me."  She doesn't question Him or His commands.  She sees it as good and is so grateful that He met her there and saw her in her wilderness.  She felt looked after.  It actually ties in so well to the verse in Psalm 138.  He met her "in the midst of trouble".  Even in her fleeing, He met her.

Before quarantine it was hard enough.  There are very few solid Christian men and women for the marrying.  Godly friendships are hard to find.  Then you add quarantine and it starts to feel, if you are a young adult, that maybe just maybe, you're going to be single for life.  That's how some people in my house are feeling.  As I shared with them this passage, so many things came to my mind that this could relate to, but as I talk with my kids in particular I shared with them to stop fighting their wilderness, to not go ahead of God and settle for just anyone, to not take matters into their own hands and then flee to the wilderness to wrong friendships, wrong relationships, because it is clear in these verses that only God gets to tell us when to move and when to flee, when to marry, which friendships are best.  I found out later that was a real encouragement to them because at some point we all feel like Hagar and even Sarai.  We don't trust God deep down to take care of us.  We don't think He sees us and that He won't look after us, so we step in to help God because, obviously, though He can, He just isn't or He won't.  Things always go badly when we do this as they did for Sarai and Abram.  Strife happens.  People get hurt.  Wrong decisions are made.

The encouragement is clear, though.  God does see.  He looks after us.  He redeems bad decisions.  How wonderful is that.

Anyway, my early morning brought great clarity to the Scriptures and then a hilariously long nap that afternoon.  The whole point?  If you can't sleep, get up, listen to what God is trying to tell you and then later go lay down...the day will pass a lot faster and you'll have something to tell others!lol

I did get up early today, not as early as yesterday, but early enough.  My kids will be excited to put me down for my nap after lunch, I'm sure.