Parenting

I'm at a loss right now as to how to parent. Gidster is going on 2 hours of crying now because he doesn't want to go to sleep by himself. Over the Christmas vacation, he had something like 10 straight days of being in the same room at night with us, now I guess he wants that again. So for the last 2 hours it's been, "Mommy, mommy, mommy! Daddy, daddy, daddy!" He had stopped while I started writing this, but I think my wife just tried to go cover him up and he wasn't really asleep yet, and so he's started up again. Did I mention that it is 3:40 in the morning?

It's such a dilemma. We've got no shower right now, so I've got to be up at 5:00 in order to have time to go to the school and shower. So right now I'm looking at about 3 hours total of sleep. Well, that is if I can go to sleep with him wailing, which I haven't accomplished in the past 2 hours.

But anyways, the dilemma is that Gideon is scared that we won't come and get him, and he simply wants to be with us. So he will cry unless we are with him. So, if we leave him, it confirms his fear that we aren't coming back for him and he continues to cry. However, if we go and get him it reinforces his tactic of crying to get us to come to him in the middle of the night. And then he learns to do it not just tonight but tomorrow night, and the next night, and the next night, until we finally stop it. So we're just trying to stop it now.

It's a painful experience Lord. I have to wonder how many of these painful experiences in teaching Your people lessons and helping them mature You go through on an every day basis. This is the problem of pain. It sucks, but it teaches.

I'm coming to You now, because I'm going to need some sleep when Gideon is done crying. And I probably won't be able to get up the extra bit early that I normally do in order to ensure our morning time together. So I wanted to make sure not to miss our time alone completely. So instead of 5:00 AM, here I am at 3:45 AM. Not sure how this is going to play out later in school, but I'm hoping that I can keep my eyes open!

Thank You, for Gideon is quiet right now. I pray that You can help us parent him through the 2's. I didn't expect this age to be quite as hard as it has been the past several weeks, and we're trying so hard to make sure we raise a God-honoring child. It's scary to think that your child might be able to walk away from something that is so important. I think this is another amazing thing about You and Your creation of man. You have created us with the ability and capacity to reject You and all that is important. How can You be so brave? If I could have a guarantee that Gideon would serve You, I would take it in a heartbeat. I'm really not interested in freedom, just that Gideon does what is right. But I don't even have that choice. Gideon will be free, and we have to raise him with the ability to deal with that freedom.

It's certainly interesting to look at You through the lens of my parenting experience this morning. Father, guide me to some Scriptures today that bring this up again. I would love to think about this more. Right now I'm losing the ability to stay awake...

Please, 2 hour school delay...