Precious Possessions

  

   A dad just yesterday said how good it was to be able to have a good’s nights rest.  He has an almost 3 year old son and almost one year old daughter and so many nights were interrupted by them waking up, one would wake up and then the noise would wake the other up, now they were all up when they were suppose to be sleeping.  Then go to work all day after that was hard.  Now this dad said all this with love, he wasn’t complaining; you could tell he loved his kids a lot but it got me thinking.  You know, you have these stresses with your kids and then you have the occasional moment that is so precious.  Like at night when they share their heart or you see them do some heroic thing and you think, ‘this moment makes it worth it all, this is what I would miss if I didn’t have kids’. 

   The truth is when you loose a child; the hardest thing can be that you now can sleep through the night.  You wake up at night from your sleep thinking you heard the voice of your child only to realize that voice is forever quiet and you will never again get to wake up for that child.  You long to be up all night for that child.

   With Roderick there was no such thing as a day off or even a night off.  I might have been running around every night of the week to all the different doings the kids had and I’m thinking finally a night off and as I’m sitting down on the couch to relax Roderick comes up and says, “mom, I’ve been wanting you to take me to the pet store to buy a fish, your not busy now are you, can we go?” 

   All I can think is “I so long to just relax but he’s been asking for days and if I don’t do it today, when will I have the next chance’. 

   Now with the busiest part of our winter taken away, Roderick’s hockey, I have evenings that I get to relax but now I don’t want to sit down and relax, I don’t care how tired I am I’d get up in an instant to take him to the pet store or anywhere else he wanted to go. 

   My point is the thing that causes the most stress is what you miss the most, I guess it’s because even though my child has left me, my love for that child is still just as strong as it was before but the love has nowhere to go.  You can’t put action to that love and therefore the more that love is bottled up with nowhere to go the more you long to love on that child and therefore you want to love in a way that is the biggest sacrifice because that uses the strongest kind of love.  Not sure if that makes sense.

   I believe the reason raising kids is so stressful is because they are so precious.  You know every success in life adds stress to your life.  When you finally saved up enough to buy a car, now you’ve got the stress of changing the oil, getting it repaired when it breaks down, keeping it clean.  Then you buy your first house, now you’ve got to pay the bills, mow the lawn etc.  Our Pastor often reminds us of that.  But, you know, a car is easily replaceable if it causes too much stress, not so with kids, they are your most prized possessions.  They are irreplaceable and they are eternal, therefore the stress is so much greater.  Once you have those kids your life is forever changed, you want to be able to sleep through the night, you want it to go back the way it was before the kids just to be able to come into the house and relax and sleep through the night but after one stress comes the next one but no matter how much you long for the freedom you had before you had kids it’s not going to happen.  They are too precious and they have your heart; that cannot be taken away from you.  Even if you loose your kids, there is not those freedoms back only emptiness because the love in your heart for them doesn’t leave.

   Lets always remember this when we get overwhelmed with the responsibility and busyness of our kids and focus on the blessing.  They are the most prized possession we have and guess what, the only possession that we can take with us to heaven.  Not that I think of my kids as a possession.  They are not really our own to keep but that’s a different topic for a different day.