Builder and I had a rough night the other night.
Some nights are like that. He mostly grew out of his sleep disorder when he was five years old, so I am thankful for that. I have had a couple of years now, when I can mostly count on him staying asleep at night. Mostly. The other night it was getting to sleep that was the problem. Builder will latch on to a negative, build on it, blow it out of proportion, and decide the whole world must die to expiate the irritation of not getting what he wants. Which is, in these cases, impossible. For example, we are not moving to Mars next week. When I say “impossible,” I am not just being obstinate myself.
Now, as a mom, I deal with each of his gripes a few times, knowing that his mind works differently (albeit often incomprehensibly) from mine. But then, tired of repeating myself and tired of him scratching at the same irritation over and again with no relief in sight, I tell him, “We are finished talking about this.” And, the other night, after I said this over and again, I resorted to simply calling to him, “I love you, Builder. Go to sleep.”
Every single time he started up on one of his rants.
But while all of this was going on, and truly it was something of a marathon, I was asking God to give me the right words to say. Not asking “for wisdom” necessarily, but just the right words for the situation. Specific to the need of my little guy.
And where the rationale of why moving to Mars is impossible, why taking a plane to school isn’t going to happen and why we aren’t all going to die with our insides coming out (a favorite image of his that I meet imperturbably) doesn’t always get to him, the simple repetition of “I love you, Builder. Go to sleep,” was enough. Eventually.
The Lord says that as many as he loves, he rebukes and disciplines. As many as he LOVES. And he LOVES with the strength of the world. Sometimes, his rebukes and disciplines seem terribly unreasonable to us. Sometimes, we think we should get/have/do more than is reasonable, from the Divine perspective. But with each one of these rebukes, with each reminder, he is telling us what I told my son, in essence:
I love you, my child. Rest in that.
We will still fight about it. Still complain. Yet he loves us enough to know when it’s time for just the reminder.
May we be wise enough to take him up on it and just rest in that.
