Hey friend,
Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar:
It's been far too long since you've opened your Bible. Honestly, you can't remember the last time. You know it's important, but the days just keep passing by. So you decide to make a change. You set your alarm extra early for the morning. You'll get up before the kids, light a candle, brew the coffee, and read Scripture.
Your alarm goes off. You make the necessary preparations. And the moment you open that book... little footsteps start coming down the hall.
The number of times I have "made time for myself" only to be interrupted or delayed by sickness, extra needs, or general chaos is honestly reaching comedy levels. Plans get cancelled, kids throw up, babysitters reschedule, sleep disappears, and suddenly everything has to be held loosely.
As moms of littles, our days are full of interruptions.
I've been reading a book called Domestic Monastery, and in it the author tells the story of the spiritual writer Carlo Carretto. He spent more than a dozen years living as a hermit in the Sahara Desert. When he returned home, he was surprised to discover that his mother, who had spent over thirty years raising a family with no time to call her own, was more contemplative than he was.
His lesson was that while there was nothing wrong with the solitude of the desert, there was also something deeply holy about the life his mother had lived, one filled with constant interruptions.
I love this for so many reasons. But perhaps the greatest is that for a long time, I quietly viewed these years of raising littles as "lost." As if this were a season to simply endure until my real and purposeful life could begin. Maybe when everyone was finally in school. Maybe when they were sleeping through the night. Maybe then I would hear God again. Maybe then I would do something meaningful for the kingdom of God.
But what if the kingdom of God has been in front of me this whole time? With messy fingers, midnight cries, tears, sibling bickering, and another pile of laundry.
"Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.' When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there." -- Matthew 19:13-15
I've always read this verse as an encouragement to have childlike faith, which I still believe is true. But lately I've been wondering if there's another layer here. Maybe Jesus said the kingdom of heaven belongs to children because He knows something about the way life with them shapes us. Our sense of control gets smaller. We learn to hold our plans loosely. We learn to trust. We begin to see interruptions not as obstacles, but as part of the work God is doing in us.
I'm mostly writing this to my own heart, because it's hard to see the fruit of it right now. But it gives me hope to remember that God is not waiting for the next season of life to begin His work in me. He is moving here, now, in the middle of this one.