Why Are You Crying in My Face? I’m getting you what you want.

It gets better as Matteo gets older, but one of the struggles I experienced early on was that Matteo would wail and scream as loud as he could right in my face. Sometimes this would be because I was changing him, or clothing him, or his mother was getting ready to feed him. At that time it didn’t matter what I did, even if I was in the process of getting him what he wanted or needed he would still cry. This in some ways makes sense to me, as a newborn, he had no idea what was happening, he just knew he needed something, yet at the same time, it felt so ridiculous to me.

The funny thing is that I realized this is what we do with God. We scream at him, we cry out, we demand and we complain, most of the time unaware of what God is already doing for us or those around us. Just as Matteo had little or no compression of what was happening only of his need for something, sadly we go about our lives in the same way. The only challenge is that unlike Matteo we are less comprehending of the patterns and the ways in which God is already working to give us what we need, to answer our cries and care for us.

Part of this comes down to us not turning to the right place with our prayers (God). Some of it is that we stop watching. Most of it is that we haven’t trusted God enough to put it in his hands or to wait. We would rather go on crying and fighting, instead of settling into the trust that our Father in heaven provides. Matteo is learning a little of that in an earthly way, but we should be growing beyond spiritual infants, or toddlers. So we should patiently watch and learn to understand how God is working to answer our prayers and settle into that trust even while we wait.