I Am a Child of God

Copyright © 2013 NANCEE FOX.

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Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8260-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8262-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8261-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013901240

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/31/2013

Contents

What Was He Thinking!

So, How Was Your Day?

Boo Boo’s

Me Do It!

Pick Me

Seed Sowing And Gardeners

It’s All About The Clothes

Slammed Doors

Rest Time

Parties And Pleasures

Sleeping Babies

Dinner Time

Don’t Do That To Your Brother!

Grown Ups

Here, Mommy

Now?

Thanks, Dad

Does The Lord Roll His Eyes?

Take Your Medicine

Of Tricycles And Harleys

Keep It Spinning!

Apollyon

Yummy Stuff

Night And Day

The Vigil

Giraffes And Gerbils

Why, Mama, Why?

Hiding Under The Table

I Have Seen The Enemy; And It Is Me

Try It…You’ll Like It

Where’s Daddy?

Blocks

Special

Guess Who!

Is This All ? Or Whine And Cheese

Story Time

Fear Not

Raisin’

I’ll Be Right Back

The Conclusion Of The Matter

For Noni

Who told me, Pick up your pen and write.

and

For Rebecca and Matthew

Who taught me what it is to love a child

What Was He Thinking!

The pain began really early waking me from a sound sleep. I had almost drifted off when the contraction came again. Since I was still two weeks from my due date I thought I was having more of what my OB doc had called practice pains. When he first explained that term to me my reaction was,Practice pains! Excuse me! Who in their right mind needs to practice pain! I had been having those little practice sessions off and on for a while but It wasn’t long until I realized this morning we were not practicing anything. This was the real deal. Practice time was over. The contractions were very real and my husband and I were on our way to the hospital and on our way to becoming parents. God help us!

The thoughts that go through one’s mind during extreme situations can be astounding. Sometimes they don’t seem to be connected to the present reality. I read once of a lady who watched on the front lawn as firemen worked to extinguish the flames inside her home. She remarked in the article that she remembered thinking at the time what a cheerful shade of yellow the firemen’s hats were.

While I wasn’t quite that out of touch with reality I did do some deep thinking that morning that did not necessarily have to do with bringing a child into this world but then again, maybe it did. One deep thought was why in the world were hospitals so sub-zero cold. I also began a serious discussion with the Lord. I began to reason with Him over this whole birthing process. Sort of like Job I began to question the divine wisdom of what was happening to me. That can be a dangerous thing to do because God will answer back usually when we ask Him a question and it may or may not be the answer we want to hear. Just ask Job! Our God is the master of all creativity. Surely there could have been a way to bring little people into this world in a different way. Certainly there could have been a way that proved more efficient and without a doubt, less messy. Couldn’t He have just zapped babies onto the incubator?

The creative capabilities of my God amaze me. He has a beautiful desire for variety and the imaginative genius to do the impossible. Creator God could have designed our world any way He pleased. He has no end of imagination and no shortage of creative ideas. One look at the world around me tells me that my God is a master designer. He did not create one type of tree; although one huge spreading oak would have been enough. No, He did a bezillion different kinds of trees. All sizes. All shapes. Some with blooms and some without. Some trees have fruit. Some shed their leaves. Some trees stay green all the time. Some change colors depending on the weather. Who but Creator God could have come up with that!

The labor room I was in had a nice window and guess what, there were lovely trees right outside. Why, God? What were you thinking? You were wonderfully creative with the tree thing. Could You not have come up with a smoother plan for babies? Could little ones have maybe just ripened in a pod somewhere then when the time was right Mom and Dad could go pluck one off; like an apple or a pear?

Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard a dog barking. The labor room window view, I learned later, was overlooking a small park. A young man was sitting on a bench under the trees I had been admiring a few minutes ago and at his side was a beautiful Irish setter. I remember thinking, I bet that young guy is a new dad and is here with his wife and new baby. Isn’t it nice that he took their dog out for a walk. I must have been getting a little fuzzy along about then. If I wasn’t careful pretty soon I would be thinking about how cheerful the yellow hats were! At that point I began to present my case again to the Lord; this time using the animal kingdom.

The same Creator God and Master of Life that made the hamster also made the eagle, the elephant and the earth worm, the hump-back whale and butterflies. The world would have been just fine if our God had made A dog, one big happy drooling fellow would have been sufficient, let alone hundreds of different kinds. God is not short on creativity or imagination! So many animals and so much variety and so many differences I found myself reasoning. Our God loves variety and beautiful detail. He is also a master of organization and efficiency. Like the universe, His natural world runs like a Swiss watch, precise, predictable, dependable (except for that occasional rain on a Saturday afternoon that wasn’t supposed to arrive until Monday morning!).

Yes, I concluded, a look toward nature reveals a creator who is in to detail and purpose. He does everything for a reason. With that thought in mind, I wondered, why in the world do humans come into this life by way of the messy chaotic system of children? CHILDREN!

Our Great God could have designed us in any way He chose. What was He thinking? The animals have something in common that we humans are missing. They all come into this world way more equipped for life. A six week old kitten can run and play with siblings, speak fluent cat, is potty trained and will hiss at you like a ferocious beast if provoked. What’s up with that!

Could we not have been born with some strength in our limbs and speaking so Mom and Dad would know what Jr. needed instead of trying to guess what the screaming is about? Perhaps an on/off switch for bodily functions would have been a good idea, at least until one is ready for potty training. Now that’s a process isn’t it!

By this time, a nice nurse had placed a swaddled baby girl next to me. It had been a long day. All the world faded away as I looked into the perfect face of that tiny helpless human. I had pondered many things this day. At this moment I was marveling over the miracle in my arms and wondered why, why Lord, had You made the crown of creation to arrive in such a state; small, weak, helpless, completely unable to live without care.

Messy child rearing is a life- long endeavor and it is slow going, sometimes painful work. To become a parent is to have a paradigm shift with a capital P. We rub the furrows in our brows just thinking of it. However, there is reason and design and deliberate purpose for the parent/child system we were given.

The natural world reveals the creator and all powerful God. Psalms 19:1-2 says The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. Again the Psalmist points to nature in Psalms 104:24, How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Just as nature reveals to us the creator God, the parent/child relationship reveals to us the Father God.

As a good parent our Father God gives us educational experiences. He is trying to help us know the unknowable, awesome depth of His relationship with us…His children. Through our own children we learn about the Father and if we have no children, well, we all have been children so we can still learn about the Father. We can begin to grasp what it means to say I am a child of God. As scripture says in John 1:12-13, "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children