Children & Chocolate and Other Paths to God

I’ve been thinking about a friend who recently lost three family members in one week, in two separate events. All in the same week she was also scheduled for minor surgery. The amount of crap that kept snowballing for this woman was getting ridiculous, to the point where even her husband had to laugh and shake his head “I just can’t believe this, you know?”.

And while I prayed for her to find some peace, and to just get through the surgery without added complications, I was reminded of something my friend Julie said. (Julie’s husband has been dealing with cancer for 5 1/2 years, so here is a woman who knows a thing or two about dealing with life’s crap.)

She said “I don’t believe that God only gives you what you can handle.”

When I first read this (it was in a meme on Facebook), I didn’t think I agreed. After all, I think we can all be strong if we want to be, and sometimes our finest hour comes in the face of tragedy. I would like to think that God has given us all the tools necessary to deal with tough situations.

But the more I thought about this, the more I had to agree with Julie. I think, on many occasions, that yes, we are all well equipped to survive grief and suffering and that we are sometimes the better for it in the end. I also now believe, however, that God often does throw a few curveballs too many. But not without reason.

God will occasionally give you more than you can handle so that you are required to depend on others, and depend on Him.

At the very root of our faith is the idea of submission, of giving in to God. Well, you might not ever do that if you didn’t think you needed some help. Asking others for help is difficult for a lot of folks. It humbles us to admit that we can’t do something alone. From the time that we’re toddlers we strive to be able to do things by ourselves, and this is part of being human.

While being generally self-sufficient is a good thing, it’s okay to need other people and to need God, when life gets difficult. People love to be needed, and so does God. In fact, God would love for us to ask for His help every day, not just when tragedy hits. We often become closer to those who help us, and so it is with God.

So this is how he teaches us, to push us down once in a while in order to help us back up, to a hopefully better and more peaceful place than when we started.

First, let’s rename them. Miss A is four, soon to be five. Miss E is one, soon to be two.

Miss E is a piece of work. A bit more of a drama queen than her sister ever was, but I also think that all two year olds are a bit on the bipolar side, so maybe this will pass.

Her obsession the last month or so is with removing her clothes and taking off the diaper. She will absolutely refuse to keep her pants on - to the point where I had to go the consignment shop and purchase six pairs of overalls because I thought that would stop her. While this did slow her down, she now just unsnaps the buttons between the legs, or just pushes the shoulder straps down and strips that way. And at night, after safety-pinning her onesies closed and trying various methods, we’ve finally settled on cutting the feet off of footed sleepers and putting them on backwards. (picture a wet suit, with the zipper in the back) I have to do this at nap time too.

Safe to say, our little Houdini has pretty impressive gross motor skills. She’s either going to be “gifted”, or a huge PIMA when she grows up…

Miss A has recently developed a love of all things horses, which I guess is common in little girls, but where does it come from? Every year I take her to the Maryland State Fair and we always go to the horse stalls, and she is generally terrified by their size and not too impressed by the smell. I suppose if her obsession is limited to the plush variety I should consider myself lucky.

She’s also come into a really delightful sense of humor. She can tell jokes to anyone, and even if they make no sense at all, she’ll laugh so hard that you have to laugh too. And, of course, you just have to say the word “underpants” to her and she’s a puddle of giggles.

The girls aren’t babies anymore. This is all going by too fast. *sigh*

I blame my long absence from here on two things - the almost 2yr old giving up the morning nap, and Facebook.

While it was great fun in the beginning, I’ve decided in recent weeks that my days are actually better if I limit myself to one FB visit a day. Okay, maybe two. But that’s it. Really.

Once you’ve caught up with all of the people you really want to catch up with, it is useful as a networking tool, and a news tool (you’ll hear about traffic jams and flu bugs faster here than on TV). So I’m trying to just be smarter about my time, and get over my addiction.

See, it’s been so long since I’ve written more than one sentence (they’re called “status updates” for those not in the know…) that I’m feeling slightly crippled here trying to formulate paragraphs. Scary.

Oh well, bear with me. So much has happened these last few months that I want to get back into journaling before I forget!