Today my baby girl turns 1! I really can’t believe it. Everyone tells you how quickly the years go by, but it is faster than I ever could have imagined. I am so, so thankful for her life and the love she brings to our family.
Although she is only one, she is daily teaching me about God and how He feels toward His children. Today I would like to share with you five lessons my sweet, precious one year old has taught me about God.
1. His love for us is insurmountable!
For the first several months of my daughter’s life, I couldn’t stop talking about how deep my love for her was and how it was so amazing to think God’s love for us (His children) is even greater.
The love I feel toward my daughter is something I had never experienced, and to realize that God looks at me as His daughter and has the same feelings is so remarkable.
If you have a hard time embracing God’s love for you, begin to realize that He looks at you as His precious child. He loves you just as you are and wants the best for you!
2. He longs for our embrace.
When my daughter began to crawl and could willingly come over to me to be held, it quickly became my favorite thing.
She would often just be playing in her playroom and would take a break from playing to come over and have me hold her for a second. It is the best feeling to have her just lay her head on my shoulder and feel her sweet, tiny embrace.
God feels the same way about us. He wants us crawl over to Him in the middle of our busy lives and just be with Him, just embrace Him, if even for just a second.
3. He will never leave us or forsake us.
My daughter has learned that when she hears the car doors unlock that means we are coming to get her from the backseat. She excitedly waits for us as we walk to the back of the car. Well, one day I parked right next to the shopping carts, so I grabbed a cart on my way to get her.
By the time I got to her, she was hysterically crying. She usually watches us walk around the back to her, so when I took a quick detour she must have thought I forgot her. My heart broke when I saw how upset she was, and I couldn’t believe she would think I would ever leave her.
God feels the same way towards us. He will NEVER leave us or forsake us. He is always with us. Even at times when it feels He has taken a detour and is taking longer than we would like, He is with us.
4. He is always working on our behalf.
If you have ever spent much time around 1-year-olds, you know they are not the most patient of beings. The second my daughter has finished eating she is ready to get out of her highchair. No matter how quickly I work to clean her up and get her out, it is never fast enough.
One day I was having trouble getting a wipe out to wipe her hands, and she was getting more and more frustrated that she was still in her highchair. I said to her, “I am working as fast as I can” as the words left my mouth I realized that is the same thing God says to His children.
How often are we frustrated with God that things aren’t happening as quickly as we think they should be? I know I am so, so guilty of this. “Hello God, I am done doing the thing you asked me to do where is my blessing?” Or “Hello, why haven’t you fixed this situation yet, I shouldn’t still be dealing with this”.
While all along God is working as quickly as He can to get things done for us and to help us out of our situations. We just need to trust Him.
5. He wants us to take things day-by-day.
This has probably been the hardest lesson for me to learn and is one I will probably have to continue learning over and over again, but God wants us to take things day-by-day. Any other planners reading this?
I am so guilty of getting a glimpse of an idea and then planning out how that idea will work for the next 10 years of my life. God doesn’t call us to do this. Matthew 6:34 says, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today”.
We are called to live for today, focus on today and what God has called us to do today and not worry about tomorrow. This is hard, but it is something my daughter has shown me how to embrace.
No matter how hard I tried, my daughter would not get on a consistent schedule. This forced me to go with the flow. I have learned that God wants me to trust Him with even the smallest things like my day to day plan.
My daughter and I would have a great schedule one day, and I would try so hard to reenact it the next day only to end up feeling frustrated and defeated. I finally realized that she and I would have much better days together if I would just enjoy them as they came.
If she has a great day of napping and I am able to get some things done, great! I have had to learn to just enjoy it as it comes and not stress about if she is going to do it again tomorrow. Learning to just enjoy the day we are in and embrace whatever tomorrow has for us, has given me so much peace.
God will give you the strength for each day He has for you. Spending time worrying about tomorrow before it ever arrives will only leave you feeling depleted by the time you get to tomorrow.
A Never-Ending List
Honestly, this list could go on and on. I have learned so much about God’s love from my daughter, even in her short 1 year of life. God’s love for us is so grand and I am so thankful that this motherhood adventure just keeps unfolding that revelation for me.
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Yes yes yes!!!! All of these are so true and good! I look at my little boy and it brings me to tears (of joy) that God’s love for me is even greater than my love for Nolan and that’s a lot of love!!!
Exactly! Such a good God we serve!!! 🙂
Aaahhh this was SO GOOD and MATURE of you!! Not to say I have ever seen your immaturity, I mean I love your mature perspective. It’s simply NOT often easy to allow yourself to be stretched and then YIELD to the lesson!! But in your yielding to God’s lesson, you GROW, and then it also allows you THIS opportunity to share His truths publicly. I just LOVE that!!! Children and their position in life, position in our lives as their parents and the way their relation to us exemplifies OUR relation to our Heavenly Father is a lesson we can only fully understand when we have our children. You have SOOO many years of FULLY comprehending this ahead of you, that is QUITE a privileged position to be in!! 😃👏🏻👏🏻
GREAT blog sweetheart 😘😘
Thank you!! It was a fun post to write. I love how God uses her to teach me things and I completely agree that we can only begin to comprehend God’s love for us after we become parents. It’s sooo amazing how much becoming a parent changes everything!!!
EXACTLY 😍😍😍