Trials for your good.

Sorry about the lateness of this Memory Lane posting, it has been a challenging morning. The challenges of the morning make me remember the first challenges I faced concerning motherhood.

My first child was a unique kind of challenge.  He was not a sleeping, nor content baby.   The first night home from the hospital was a 'foreshadowing' of the things to come.  He had been alert and attentive from the moment he was born.  When he was screaming on the measuring table, my hubby walked over and spoke calmly to him... at that point Daniel stopped crying and turned his head towards his daddy.  It even caught his nurses off guard!!!

This alert child was brought home the evening after his circumcision.  He proceeded to scream ALL NIGHT LONG that first night.  My mother and my MIL were both there doing shifts and encouraging the brand new mother weeping in her bed that it would eventually get better.

It really didn't.  He never slept for more than 3 hours max, and that lasted till he was older than 7 months.  We left Chicago to move back home the following summer when this fussy infant was 4 months old.  By then I was seriously worried about my parenting skills.  I knew I was sleep deprived, my mother kept reminding me that my blue moods were because of it.  But I didn't know any other mother who hated her baby like I did.  They were dark days, full of dark thoughts, and much railing against God.  I had post partum depression and just didn't realize it.

Even in those moments, God provided a way out from under the burden I was given.  Matthew 11:28-30 says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."   God sent my MIL, who had suffered depression in her life and was more than willing to have her grand baby around so I could get away from him.  God also sent to me my cousin, who I had hardly known but who had suffered as I was w
ith PPD.  These ladies encouraged me, carried me along, and understood me.

My mothers were both right.  It did indeed pass.  The child in question still does not require a full night of sleep, but at 10yrs old, he can read or play Lego's in his room and does not disrupt my own sleep.  During that time, the chapter of the bible that I had memorized as a new Believer became my lifeline to my Anchor:

James 1:2-6 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,  for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.  But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

There was a purpose to my suffering.  I was being refined by fire in order than I would stand up under other burdens that would be handed to me.  I was being prepared for the life that God would lead me through.  Thanks to that beginning, I can even drive a child to the ER with a fairly calm heart.  I can unpack my home again from boxes with a sense of excitement.  What you may be suffering through right now is miserable!!!  But there is a purpose and a plan.  Keep in mind when Jeremiah 29:11 was jotted down, it was couched in the fact that the inhabitants of Jerusalem had been taken by force to Babylon.  Yet it was still written:

Jeremiah 29:11  For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

<a href=" http://tettelestai.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img src=" http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p212/tettelestai/Decorated%20images/blgospot2-1-2.jpg" alt="Memory Lane" width="125" height="125" /></a>