Meet My Friends: Crawl into Your Father's Lap

Christi with daughters Mary-Allison and Mia

Today I am excited to be sharing a guest post from my friend Christi.  I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have made it through my first year of motherhood without her.  She graciously took all my panicked phone calls and calmed my first time mom jitters over everything from development to teething!  Christi is an amazing momma, talented writer and editor and blogs at Witty Words.

One morning I struggled to get out of bed. Well, to be honest, I struggle every single morning to get out of bed. I am certainly not a morning person—and probably will never be! My perfect morning would be to rise early, get an invigorating workout in, have a meaningful quiet time with God, shower, and emerge feeling energized for the day as my darling children wake up and run swiftly to greet me. Sounds likely, doesn’t it? HA! The reality is my alarm is set for that early, early hour—and then the snooze button is pushed for 20, 30, even 40 minutes! Then I drag myself out of bed, groaning about the disappointment in myself for not waking early to exercise and have quiet time yet again.

But this particular morning, I did wake up early enough to have quiet time. And boy, did I need it that day! My heart was heavy, and I needed to be filled from God’s Word. I settled myself on the couch and barely opened my Bible when I heard the creak of my daughter’s bedroom door. I sighed. Seriously? I just wanted one morning with God by myself. Couldn’t I just have that Lord, just this one time? I gritted my teeth, already upset with my innocent child.

“Hi, Mommy,” she said sleepily.         

“Mary-Allison, it’s awful early for you to be up. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“What are you doing, Mommy?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her teddy bear.

“I was going to read my Bible, honey. But you really need to go back to bed.”

 “Mommy, I just want to be with you.”

Very gently, Mary-Allison climbed into my lap, laid her head on my chest, and said, “OK, Mommy, you can keep reading. I just want to be with you.”

 I breathed a prayer of thanks to God and squeezed my precious child, taking in the moment that I knew would be fleeting.        

God taught me on that early morning that this is what He says to us: I want to be with you. I want you to crawl into My lap and allow Me to be your Father, your Friend, and your Savior.

Won’t you crawl into your Father’s lap today?