Another life lesson with Izzy

My son Izzy is now almost a year old, and he's very close to walking (hard to believe, time flies). Well, over the past couple of days my family has been taking down the Christmas decorations and putting our house back together after the holidays. Because of that, Izzy has had a blast pushing around the tubs and containers that are sitting all over my house waiting to be put away. You can see him do it in the video above.

That being said, I've become intrigued by watching him do this. He gets going faster and faster, and he has a great time until he bumps into something and gets stuck. It's then that he immediately starts fussing out of frustration. Well, this morning I was watching Izzy push his tub down the hallway when God used this frustration to open my eyes to something. Izzy was pushing the tub and headed for the bathroom, so I called out to him, "Izzy, that's a dead end." Naturally, Izzy kept plowing forward full-speed-ahead. He pushed the tub straight to the back wall of the bathroom and got himself stuck. True to form, Izzy started grunting out of the frustration of being stuck. Quick to his assistance, I bent over, picked him up with one arm and grabbed his tub with the other. But it was in this moment when Izzy's demeanor changed...in fact, it was precisely this moment when Izzy started freaking out. He burst into tears and shreeked as though I was taking away his favorite toy. Little did he know that I was just turning him around so that he could push the tub back in the other direction. A mere second later I sat him and his tub back down on the floor, and he was off again moving in a better direction.

God used that moment to open my eyes today. There have been SO many times in my life when God has intervened to get me out of a tight-spot, a dead end, and instead of letting Him just help me out of my jam, I have often chosen in those moments to whine, protest, complain, and panic...yet, all the while, God was diligently working to improve my direction, alter my course, and help me out of a jam.

I kind of felt in that moment like God was showing me this as a means of inviting me to trust Him more. In fact, I just sensed God saying, "Mark, I'm here to help you."

About 5 minutes later Izzy got stuck again, so I walked over to him once again to turn him around. But this time as I bent over to pick him up I made sure that his eyes locked on to mine. And though he was frustrated from being stuck, he didn't freak out this time. He just looked deeply into my eyes and let me do what only I could do for him in that moment. It was a pretty intense gaze that we shared into one another's eyes. Neither one of us took our eyes off of the other through the entire process...it was just our way of not letting the frustration become overwhelming. What a HUGE lesson that was for me!

Here's a tough question (one I've been dealing with all day):
When the going gets tough for you, do you get so focused on complaining about your situation that you can't even realize that God is working to get you out of your jam?

I so want to know and love my Father to the point of relentlessly trusting him at all times. Even when it doesn't make sense to me...even when it feels like he's taking "my toys" away from me, I want to have the faith today and every day to trust that, whatever He may be doing, it is something that is going to improve my direction and set me on a better path. And I want to trust Him to the point of not fussing about it, becoming frustrated by it, or freaking out about it.

God, please help me to find this trust in you.
Please help us all to find this trust in you.

Grace and Peace