I'm Listening

Sometimes life is hard.  Okay, lots of times life is hard, and I hate it when it starts to feel like we are in similar situations over and over again.  I have been feeling like that with one of my precious little ones.  I remembered a lesson I heard once.  If you don't figure out why God keeps bringing you to a similar place you are bound to end up back in that place over and over and over again.

Then I heard a speaker through Ted X (You'll have to put that in YouTube if you are curious because I came across it randomly) and she was talking about the same idea.  When God brings hard things into our lives our job is to ask him for his lesson in that hard thing.  If we can just get the lesson oftentimes we can MOVE ON from a hard place.  Moving on can take a lot of forms, maybe I will move on literally, mentally, or emotionally, but I won't stay feeling trapped in a painful place.

Long story short, or I will never publish.  I asked God what the lesson was in my struggles with Tot.  I felt/heard him say, "Listen."  Several times since then he has confirmed that message.

I struggle with hearing "innappropriate displays" of discomfort.  Too often I want to shut it down and end my discomfort.  I have taken that lesson to heart.  I have had to force myself at times to say, "I'm listening," when I want to say, "Stop screaming."  I am seeing a huge difference in him.  Even some of the antics that aren't about just screaming in fear or anger.  If I say, "I heard you say you saw a tractor."  Then Tot stops screaming about the tractor he just saw.  If I say, "I hear you saying you are thirsty," then he stops moaning and twisting and banging himself into me.  Even when I can't get to it right away it is helping him so much when I hold his little hand and look in his face and just say, "I'm listening." 

Thank God that He gets me even better than I do.