For His Glory: Who Nose Better?

My son is 5 1/2 years old and he is anxious to do many things by himself. This morning he wanted to toast his bagel all by himself in our toaster oven. He has been itching to do this for days. Today I thought we would work on it together. Our toaster oven has a glass door which gets hot and our counter is small and with James up on the small counter it is hard to get the bagel out safely. I let him put the bagel in, turn it on and was going to let him try to get it out (with my monitoring of course). However, I realized he was having trouble maneuvering the knife to get the bagel out so I had to take over. I said, "I'll stab the bagel with the knife, then you can pull it out." He did not like this idea and he immediately shut down. He didn't want to pull the bagel out anymore since he didn't stab the bagel himself. I gently picked him up and said, "Let's go look in the mirror."

I then proceeded to take him to the mirror where just by looking he was immediately reminded of the injury on his nose from Saturday.

On Saturday, he thought it was a good idea to go running, roll on an exercise ball and fall head first into a beanbag. I told him to stop because he was going to get hurt. Five minutes later though he went and did it again, and this time he did miss the beanbag and you can see the results of that on his nose.

So this morning I asked him, "Who knows (nose:) better?"

"When Mom tells you not to do something it isn't because she is trying to be mean or prevent you from doing something, but she is trying to protect you. There will be a day when you can do it all by yourself but right now you just need to trust me and believe that I am stopping you from doing something because it is best for you; even if you don't see it."

As a parent I'm starting to learn that I need to listen to the advice that I am teaching my kids because I often find that those lessons coordinate very well with what God is trying to teach me at the moment. Currently, the Lord and I are working on helping me to trusts Him better and not shutting down completely when I sense Him trying to help me out.

I know it probably sounds absurd but I realized last week during one of my Breaking Free individual study times that I had some areas where I was trusting myself more than I was trusting God. I have areas in my life where I don't understand God and what He is doing so like James, I choose to shut down and not even try anymore. I trust myself and my ability to do things more than I trust God. And God gently pulls me away and takes me to the past and points "Remember that time? You did it your way and you got hurt. Why don't you follow my lead and allow me to help you through this time?"

So I'm learning to trust again, to trust God's heart toward me is good and even though I don't understand why I can't have things my way that His ways are better than my ways. I would much rather trust Him and His infinite wisdom than trust myself and my finite and unwise ways.

He knows better!