God Wants to Help Us

The 4-year-old had the flu and was vomiting on the sofa.
The 2-year-old was being potty-trained and crying, "Mama, I have to go poo-poo.
The 5-month old was screaming with hunger.
And I was a crazy person.  No matter which direction I went in, it was the wrong direction.

I had had 3 children in 4 years, and I was in way over my head.  I've always had trouble being organized myself, but managing the daily needs of babies and toddlers was totally beyond my capabilities.  The stabilizers of my life up to this point had always been prayer and sleep -- and now there was no time for either one.

Because I nursed my children, it seemed that for years, the longest stretch of sleep I had was about an hour and a half.  In addition, allergies continued to cause ear infections, tonsillitis, colic, and other problems that kept us all awake during the nights.  When I tried to pray ---or even to reach some level below that of constant panic --- a baby would wake up crying.  I wish I had been mature and stable enough at the time, walking with God enough to know that my "prayer" was allowing Him to help me in my stress.  My prayer should have been that of Martha, taking care of what needed to be done without yearning to sit down like Mary, listening at the feet of Jesus.

I had tried calming myself with the latest fads -- yoga, Transcendental Meditation, and the "Power of Positive Thinking" advocated by Universal Unitarian literature.  Obviously, none of these methods worked because there was no room in my life for "ooommmmmm."

Finally, in desperation, I said to the Lord, "If you give me time to pray, I will take whatever time you give me, instead of running around trying to get diapers washed and other things done."  And then I managed to release my control of trying to find time for myself.  I put it in His hands.

A week or so later, my neighbor across the street asked if she could take the children with her to the bank.  Whaaaaaaat????? Who does that?  Take two children to the bank (she was leaving the baby with me, obviously.)  And soon she started taking them with her to the grocery store and other places.  Usually, they were gone only about 20 minutes at a time, but I had promised God that I would take that time to pray, and I did.  I was amazed at His solution!  It seems that all I needed was a few minutes now and then to calm down and catch my breath and realize that the chaos was temporary.

God wants to help us with our lives.  Emmanuel means "God with us."  But we can't believe it.  We think we have to stretch ourselves into all kinds of postures -- physical and mental and spiritual -- to reach Him.  But He wants to reach us!  That's why Jesus came in the flesh -- to reach us where we are!  "Prayer" is simply leaning into Him and allowing Him to enter into our lives, no matter where we are, no matter how weak we are.  He is not far away, but near at hand, if we could only believe it!