What more do you want from me?

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. ~ Psalm 107:1, NIV

Real MOMent

“All you do is spend time with your friends, you don’t care about us” these were words spoken by my son the other week. While they were followed by my daughter yelling “that’s not true,” her validation didn’t completely lessen the hurt that I immediately felt after his words were said.

Once I gave myself an hour of mental mom guilt, I started recounting my recent outings with my friends in order to further analyze the source of the comment. From September to now (mid November), I have been to 2  brunches in recognition of my birthday and two dinners with friends. One of the two dinners was planned months in advance based on how hard it was to coordinate schedules. There was also one Saturday morning charity run. 

Contrastly, if I had an active parent resume, some of my current highlighted bullets would include:

·        Actively involved in the PTA/in the classroom.

·        Completed countless hours checking third grade schoolwork w/a goal of daily review with my preschooler.

·        Ability to be flexible in the kitchen by allowing my children to be sous chefs upon request.

·        Consistent participant in “movie night” for at least 35 of the 45 Friday/Saturday nights that have passed thus far this year.

·        Fully responsible for the scheduling of family trips with an emphasis on the creation of memories.

·        Team player in the completion of puzzles and playing board games.

·        Talented in planning birthday parties and newly skilled in the personalization of party takeaway items as a proficient user of CRICUT and CANVA.

·        Self-motivated in ensuring all holidays activities, inclusive of quality time, are meticulously planned at least 3-4 weeks in advance.

·        Successful in the execution of all the above bullets unless there is an unexpected household sickness.

To add insult to the injury, the day the comment was made I had even planned a surprise adventure the very next day to Great Wolfe Lodge to celebrate how well my son had been doing this school year with the demands of his rigorous Fall baseball schedule, utilizing two PTO days to ensure complete attention would be dedicated to the experience.

Ultimately, I was left thinking “What more do you want from me?”

I have and will continue to take my son’s words to heart (yep, that same heart where I pulled that knife out of that day), I understand as an adult the words might have been laced with some ungratefulness and lack of awareness as a result of age. Also, children do not understand the behind the scenes efforts of their parents. 

Which left me with the thoughts on how many times have my ungratefulness and lack of awareness/acceptance based on spiritual immaturity has left God thinking “What more do you want from me?”

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MOMent of Clarity

In the “Real Moment” I can understand that maybe my son just wants to spend more quality time with me, which doesn’t mean significant, quality time is not spent already with him or the infrequent times that I am out with friends equates to my lack of love or care for my children. I can’t spend every single moment of every single day with my children, but I can show my love and care for them in many other ways (No worries, no more resume highlights here).

Similarly, in my spiritual journey with God, there are times when His love doesn’t appear in the way that I would prefer and I am not fully aware of the efforts He is making on my behalf behind the scenes. However, it doesn’t equate to His love or actions being nonexistent. God’s  timing and my perception of delays does not mean my prayers have fallen on deaf ears. My moments of worldly disappointments doesn’t mean Heaven didn’t earn gains. His love is unconditional no matter how ungrateful my actions have been. Honestly one of the thoughts that crossed my mind that day, knowing of the Great Wolfe surprise I had planned, was canceling it based on feeling like a lot of my sacrifices had been taken for granted (which aligns to another part of the conversation not shared). Those in the moment thoughts of canceling the trip  again highlights how great our Heavenly Father is because none of my sacrifices can ever touch the one He gave us by allowing His Son to die on the cross (John 19:28-37). Yet there are STILL times when I come to Him with amnesia, comparisons, and “why me” questions. Although justified, His response is never “What more do you want from me?” He addresses me with patience, kindness, and guidance.

If the root cause of my son’s comment was just wanting us to spend more time together, then maybe the root cause of some of my ungratefulness for the things that God has done in my life would be the need to spend more time in the Word, learning more and being reminded of His character. The reality is that even if God didn’t do one more thing for me,  in my lifetime, there would not be anything more that I should want from Him that could validate the love already shown and promises kept. Ultimately, I should be living the rest of my life humbly asking God “What more does He want from me?”