Year after year, I’ve sought God for wholeness in my family. I’ve pleaded for a Dad who would love my boys as his own. A man who would value God and family and partner with us in this thing called life. How tired I find myself of fighting my own battles always alone. With consistency over time, I’ve reminded God that I can just never be whole (or happy) without restoration to my family. I’ve even fasted for days, all in a sub-conscious, childish effort to manipulate the plan of God in hopes he’d look down from heaven and have pity on me, declaring that He’d better hurry and make things happen or I might starve to death! Oh, pitiful me.
I have a word for me. That word is “brat.”
A brat demands their own way in spite of anything else.
We tend to consider people to be bratty when they’re selfish or demanding something rude, but we shouldn’t be exclusive. If I long for something perfectly wonderful, yet demand it in my own time frame, I can wear the “brat” title with pride. If the shoe fits, we might as well stomp in it.
As I realized the lesson that I’d just learned from my own child, I made a choice. A choice to stop hoping for good? To stop hoping to be loved and love in return? No, Not at all. I made a choice to take all those positive elements and bundle them into one well-meaning heap and set them aside. To carefully tuck them away. A choice to stop demanding, stop fasting for my own way, to stop spending my life, prayers and energy pleading as if we were in line at Costco, assuring my Father that I can never be happy to wait.
Just as I now have those costumes put away in the closet, waiting for Christmas, so are my dreams. They’re there. They’re alive, but I’ve made the choice to put them away. I don’t have to fear. Just as I have those costumes, God has my future. Just as Trevor can know that when he opens that present on Christmas morning, his joy will be boundless and he’ll wrap his arms around me, proclaiming that I was right, and he’s so happy he waited. In like manner, there will be a day when restoration comes to me, and when it does, I know that my joy will be boundless. I’ll pour my love on God, proclaiming that He was right, and admit that I’m so happy I waited.
Trevor has forgotten the costume for now. It doesn’t take away his daily joy, he doesn’t talk about it and he doesn’t think about it. It doesn’t consume him. It doesn’t have to, because I’ve got this. I’ll make sure he’s not disappointed. He can trust me. The same applies with myself. My lack no longer takes my daily joy. No more allowing what I don’t have to consume me any longer. I don’t have to. God’s got this.
How often I’ve delayed writing the tune of my heart, thinking it’d be so much better to be granted full restoration and then write the details accordingly, but honestly, not all of us are restored yet, including myself. Seemingly proper closure would be to write this story after Christmas, when the gift is in Trevor’s hands and hind sight is 20/20. But just like with my own story, I choose to write it from the middle. I don’t see the end, and neither does my son. I don’t hold the gift yet and neither does he, but I am confident in the giver of all good things. I trust God as Trevor trusts me. He makes everything beautiful in His time. I trust His way, and I trust His plan.
(Update: As we have just packed away our Christmas decorations, I can say with confidence that their wait was worth it. They couldn’t have been happier to be handed what they’d waited on!)
Amy Howard Davis has been a single mom for the last seven years and lives in Kansas City with her two sons, ages 8 and 9. Follow Amy on Facebook.
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