It’s snowy outside. Schools are shut down, many businesses are closed, cousin Deb is working from home and watching Cam, and my husband and son are napping (something rare for both of them). Oh how I wish I was napping, but I can’t. I slept from about 2-3 PM, then my son started stirring and waking up. I picked him up, nursed him a bit, put him back in his crib, and laid back down to nap. About 5 minutes later, he did the same thing. I patted him on the back and shushed him to see if he would go back to sleep. No luck. So, I picked him up, sat down in the rocker and nursed him again. He was back to sleep quickly, but in a light sort of sleep. Whenever Hosea is on the boob and being held, he is pretty content.
As I held my beautiful boy and rocked him for the next forty minutes, I was overcome with darkness. I sat holding and rocking my miracle baby, gazing at him and my amazing husband napping on our bed, and yet all I could do was cry and feel sad. I kept thinking about how fortunate I was to be able to breastfeed my son and those thoughts gave way to thoughts of my dearest friend, Linda, who had a bilateral mastectomy yesterday. I longed to be with her and support her. Then I thought about how I can’t do anything alone anymore because I have a baby attached to my boob. My son LOVES breastfeeding, which I should be 100% thankful for, right? He’ll tolerate a bottle of pumped breastmilk from someone, but he can’t be fooled for too long. He wants the real thing. That makes it pretty much impossible for me to leave him…ever. I LOVE BEING A MOM, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I really don’t like it. I am SO SO SO tired! I am delirious tired. My son is 6 ½ months old and he does not “sleep through the night”…what does that even mean? I looked it up. It means that your baby sleeps 5-6 hours at a time. Well, my son does not do that. Ever. He may have a three hour chunk of sleep on occasion, but for the most part, he is awake, wanting to eat (more like wanting to nurse than eat), every 1-3 hours. It is killing me. For 6 ½ months, I have slept from about 9 PM to 8 AM in 1-3 hour increments. Believe me, it does not add up to 11 hours, even when I may be in bed (or nearby my bed) for that length of time. My husband is an amazing help. He cares for me and Hosea in ways I never imagined a husband and father would. Nonetheless, he does not have boobs and so the role of soothing Hosea back to sleep falls of me the majority of the time. If you remember our post about our “high needs baby”, well, it is affirmative…Hosea still is needy. Our son does not like to nap. I have been given countless ideas about how to help him sleep better, many of them I have tried, but I am tired of trying. Hosea is special…the tricks of the trade do not work on him. I have been watching kids since I was 11, and I have never encountered such a strong-willed, vocal, and needy baby. My son completely baffles me. I know, I know…the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I have heard this many times and I’m sure some day I will be thrilled about this, but right now, I am tired, weary, and sometimes annoyed by my son’s temperament. Another struggle of Hosea’s temperament is how much he dislikes the car. I think it’s mainly his car seat…he does not like being constricted or hot. He also loves being held and the car seat doesn’t exactly feel like a warm body. I took Jed to the airport this last Sunday so he could fly to California for his friend’s mom’s funeral. It was my first time being alone with Hosea for an extended period of time. That may seems strange (I think it is), but this kid is a ton of work. It takes two of us to do most normal things. Hosea SCREAMED for 15 of the 20 minutes it took to drive home from the airport. Hosea’s hysterical crying makes my hormones do all sorts of crazy things. I pretty much felt like I was having a mini-anxiety attack as I drove home. So, needless to say, doing anything with our son that requires us driving anywhere (road trip to Wisconsin or trip to Target) is anxiety producing. I have this picture in my mind of me loading up Hosea in the car and taking him with me on a mommy-son outing…just enjoying time together. Maybe someday my life will look like that, but for now, it is only a dream. I told Jed that if I could only change one thing about our son it would be his dislike of the car. Honestly, I think I’d want to change that more than his sleeping through the night. It’s a toss up.
So, these are some of the thoughts I had sitting in the rocking chair. Tired thoughts, weary thoughts, and thoughts full of self-pity. Then, I remembered a devotional from My Utmost For His Highest, by Oswald Chambers (August 20th). I didn’t want to remember it, but I did.
Christ-Awareness
. . . and I will give you rest —Matthew 11:28
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me . . . and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.
My reality = I sleep very little, I am constantly tired, my son requires TONS of time and creative energy, my life looks nothing like it used to 6 ½ months ago. I think I have been focusing so much on these realities (my self-awareness has taken over and I am drenched with self-pity) that I have lost sight of Christ and what He says about me and my life. My reality in Christ = He supplies for my every need, He gives strength to me when I have none, He gives me a self-less love for my son that can ONLY come from Him, my understanding of God’s love for me and what being a servant truly means has grown dramatically in the last 6 ½ months. I am blessed! I have so much to be thankful for! Lord, forgive me for my self-pity and the inward focus of my thoughts…today and in recent days. I need Your rest.
After 40 minutes of rocking Hosea, I put him back down in his crib and tried to nap again. I couldn’t. So, I got up and took a shower. I stood in the shower and cried and prayed. I kept repeating, “Help me, Lord. I need You.” I sensed His presence. I got out of the shower and when I saw that my husband and son were still asleep, I knew I should blog about my thoughts…more for me than for anyone else. I choose to put my faith and trust in Christ…no matter what…even on my darkest days, like today. Today, I’m exhausted, my friend has no boobs, my aunt is dying from cancer, and my husband’s friend is without his mother. Jesus, COME! Establish rest in my situation and in the situations of so many around me.
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