My favorite time of day is bedtime. Bedtime at my house has always been relatively easy. Our girls don't get out of bed, not even once. No requests for a drink. No excuses that they need to go to the bathroom. They just go to bed and go to sleep.
Not only that, they go to bed at 7:00 p.m. and sleep until 7:00 a.m.
It really is bliss. (Minus of course Nikki's head banging that sounds like someone is building furniture, but even that is getting better little by little, and we are assured that someday she will outgrow it.)
They would get in their beds and lie down and go to sleep if that's what we wanted, but they always request me to rock them to sleep. Whenever possible, which is most every night, I do, in fact, rock them to sleep.
On the nights that I don't rock them, they don't sleep well. They toss and turn. They have bad dreams. Nikki bangs her head particularly hard.
And on the nights that I do rock them, they crawl up into my lap, wiggle themselves into a little ball, snuggle under their blanket and melt into my arms, and fall fast asleep.
It is one of the best moments of our day.
There is something incredibly comforting about crawling up into the lap of the person in your life that provides you comfort, security, unconditional love.
It's how I feel about Jesus. And some days, I don't know what else to do but to crawl up into his lap and melt into his arms.
Putting my kids on a school bus, thinking about their safety all day, thinking about the parents whose children went off to school one day and never came home again. It's too much.
All that to say, I have long since learned that we cannot protect our children from all this world can do to them. And I have long since learned not to live in fear of those things. We simply cannot choose fear and all that it will drive us to do.
I have learned to pray and trust God. And sometimes, when I am overwhelmed by life, I crawl up into His lap and sleep.
They do love their momma.
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