What in the WORLD do you think you're doing?
I read this little "quiet time" thing, from a MOPS book I got called "Just give me a little piece of quiet: 60 mini-retreats for a mom's soul" by Lorilee Craker the other night, very fitting for the week we've had here, I think (add to the hair cutting - our middle child had VERY long hair and cut it off up to her ears herself, well only on the sides - a permanent marker all over the walls, chairs and sofa, same child, thankfully it did come out of the furniture!)
What in the WORLD do you think you're doing?
The spirit is willing, but the body is weak. Matthew 26:41
Kids do the darnedest things, don't they? Really wacky things that make no sense to anyone but them. Case in point: When my teenage babysitter Helen was five, she got a pet goldfish. Though the fish was in a baggie of water when she brought him home, soon he found himself swimming in a glass of milk. Little Helen, heeding her parent's constant refrain to drink milk because it was good for her, transferred the fish to a cup of milk. Naturally, within very little time, that lactose intolerant carp was belly up, much to Helen's great dismay. Her parents could only scratch their heads and ask, ""What do you think you're doing?" Helen was scarred for life - and eschews dairy products, by the way.
When my son Ezra was two and a half, he gave me the fright of my life. One morning when I was doing dishes, he started crying. I looked over, and to my absolute horror, he had glued his eye shut with my nail glue. It was one of those moments when time and space just stand still. Instantly, I re-created the crime; Ez had supposed that my nail glue was eyedrops since it was in a similarly shaped bottle and, copying me, he dropped some glue in his eye. Mercy me! I was a mess, imaginining emergency rooms and irreversibly damaged eyesight! I quickly washed his eye with a warm washcloth. Thankfully, the glue had not yet set and I was able to pray his eyelides open. What was he thinking? Well, I know what he was thinking, but stil ... wacky.
My friend Deone's daughter, Morgan, refused to wear anything other than a bathing suit for three months after her baby sister, Anna, was born. She would kick up a fuss like you wouldn't believe if other types of garments - say a dress for church - were introduced. Deone and her husband finally figured that this was Morgan's reaction to sharing them and her life with Anna. Morgan didn't have temper tantrums, or hide under the bed, or try to shove the baby off the couch like some older siblings have done. She simply wanted to wear a bathing suit every day. That she could control, somewhat, while the presence of a baby sister was completely out of Morgan's toddler hands. And just so you know, neither Morgan nor Anna is scarred for life. They get along famously, actually. During the bathing suit era, though, her actions just seemed nutty to everyone. "What in the world are you doing?" Deone probably wanted to ask her tyke as day after day the old bathing suit went on.
It would be nice to outgrow the mind-boggling folly of youth, but sometimes we adults still do things that make no sense to anyone, least of all ourselves. I look back on some of the actions I've taken and things I've said and wonder what in the world I was thinking. Putting a fish in milk, gluing an eye shut, and wearin a pink two-piece every day is kooky stuff, but it's all child's play compared to the sinful compulsions and ruts we grown-ups get ourselves into. Even the apostle Paul talked openly about how frustrating it was for him to do those things he knew he shoudln't do.
Just as the grown-ups in th elives of Helen, Ez, and Morgan could see, after a while, why their children had acted so bizarrely, so God knows our motivations, yearnings, and failures. He knwos how our compulsive natures can sometimes act faster than our brains. But the difference is that he has given us the tools and support we need to stay on track, to not veer away from what we know is good and right and sane.
"If any of you lacks wisdome, [she] should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to [her]," James wirtes (James 1:5). We have wisdom, boundless love, rock solid support from above, beneath, and beside us. We are "hemmed in" from evey side, braced securely against ever attack. We have angels fighting on our behalf and a God who died to cover our sins and give us power and strength. When we believe that deep down in the very core of our being, we will never again cause anyone, especially ourselves, to say, "What in the world are you doing?"
For what I do is not the good I want to do; no the evil I do not wan to do - this I keep on doing. Roamns 7:19
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