Humbled

Part of the reason I spend so much time on my knees these days is that my kids put me there.  

And I’m not talking about cleaning up the nail polish spills my 5 year old graces my bathroom floor with or the intricate car tracks my almost-four year old counts on me to build for him, or even the plain fact that it’s somehow physically easier these days just to drop there than to bend over and risk losing my pregnancy-compromised equilibrium when trying to get eye-to-eye with the already-thinks-she-is-a two year old.  

Nope.  I’m talking about the way they open my eyes to certain truths that I’m ordinarily too “high-on-myself” to get.  The way that certain interactions with these small little people drive me to my knees, sometimes my face, as I am humbled enough to see bigger pictures than my selfish eyes often allow.

A few years ago I confessed my sin of pride to the Lord.  I asked Him if there was any way for Him to completely cleanse my heart of it.

And He made me a Mom.

Yesterday as I was bustling around my kitchen trying to sort out a passable dinner my 5 year old daughter flitted around my feet, carrying a bucket full of water and mumbling something about “washing feet.”  I was in a hurry and probably just gave her the cursory nods and “yeps” as I tried to focus on the nearly algebraic equation of “who eats what times any given day to the power of what’s in my fridge and pantry.”  She finally got my full, undivided attention with;

“But Mom, I really just want to bless you with it!”

As it turns out, she had studied John 13 in school that day, the chapter in which Jesus washes the feet of His disciples.  She really just wanted me to stop so she could wash my feet before the dinner making process began.

I dropped every utensil and thought, and sank onto the small stool she had positioned in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Quietly and gently she washed my (perhaps) swollen, dirty feet.  We sat there for a moment and talked about why Jesus had done that for His friends and then she proceeded to move on to her little sister’s feet which had by now shown up on the scene.  Before dinner we emptied the linen closet of towels to clean up the water that had ended up all over the kitchen floor, but I was too busy being rightly humbled to notice the inconvenience.

Later, I sat on the side of my son’s bed and prayed a standard “before bed” prayer with him, signing off quickly in hopes of getting my exhausted self into bed at the same time as my children.  He immediately reminded me that I had forgotten to pray that he would have no bad dreams.  I acquiesced and added a tag to my prayer that was – in hindsight- perhaps half-hearted.  As I exited his room and busied myself with turning off hallway and bathroom lights I heard his soft voice and peeked back in to see if he needed me.  

 He didn’t.  He had decided to take matters into his own hands and was busy pleading almost broken-record like to Jesus to keep him from bad dreams.  I sank to the floor beside his door for the rest of his prayer and silently affirmed every word, faced once again with my selfishness and humbled by one so much closer to the ground than myself.

At 2:30 in the morning when I heard my youngest call me, I ran out of bed and fell to my knees at her bedside.  She had been sick that evening and I was trying to save myself the work of having to change her sheets once again.  As my eyes finally opened enough to focus on my sick little 22 month old, I heard her sweet voice;

“Mommy?  Pray Tilly.”

My head dropped to her pillow and I prayed earnestly for her to feel better, for Jesus to remove every trace of cough, cold and flu from her right there.  She turned on her side and drifted back to sleep and I stumbled back to bed...thankful for another opportunity to be led to Jesus by a child.

I often forget that it is the same Holy Spirit at work in the heart of a child that has the power to heal the sick, raise the dead, break chains of bondage and radically change lives.  There’s not a “scaled down version” of the Holy Spirit for kids…they have the same access to God’s Power that I as an adult do.  And perhaps even more so, in that they are “closer to the ground” than I am.  There is less distance for them to cover to get out of the way and let the mighty hand of God come a-swingin’.

Indeed, it is that same Holy Spirit of old that comforts my children, helps them in their troubles, reveals the Father’s heart to them, and guides them into truth.

The same Holy Spirit that so gently and faithfully, uses the littlest people in my life to bring me to my knees.