I think moms should get P.E. credit for changing diapers.
Why? If you’ve ever had a child like mine, you know.
My daughter Jessica is now sixteen months old. She is well past the newborn stage where at the most, all she did during a diaper change was cry. She’s even graduated past the stage where babies discover they can kick, and that doing so can interfere with Mommy’s changing a diaper and possibly cause enough trouble that Mommy will change her mind and leave the baby alone. Jessica is now to the stage where if she’s not interested in having her diaper changed, she puts forth some full-body resistance.
This often involves rolling from side to side, or even trying to roll onto her tummy and get up. She’s smart, and she usually waits until I have the least control over her body—that is, when I’m trying to hold the front part of the diaper on her tummy with one hand and use the other hand to bring the tab up and around to secure the diaper closed. She will roll to one side, almost onto her tummy. In the split second it takes me to realize that she’s done it again, she’s onto her tummy, and the diaper is history.
One day, I was attempting to change her diaper as she lay on her changing table pad. For some reason (she didn’t want to be messed with, or she didn’t want to lie down, or because it was the wrong day of the week), she was particularly fussy.
I tried to interest her in a toy we had hanging in that wall hanging thing you buy with a set of bedding—you know, the one that has several pockets for you to put toys or supplies in.
It didn’t work. Jessica continued to fuss and to squirm back and forth.
Finally, I gave up trying to convince her to lie there nicely and decided I was just going to have to make it happen. “All right, we can do this the hard way,” I said firmly.
I leaned over, using my forearm to hold down her torso while with my hand and the other arm, which was free, I was able somehow to get that diaper on her.
Jessica didn’t like it one bit. Realizing she couldn’t get out of the situation made her even angrier. She screamed and cried indignantly until I was able to pick her up and cuddle her (whereupon the tears magically ceased).
It didn’t have to be that hard, I thought as she calmed down. You might as well have submitted, because it was going to happen anyway.
Then I realized something. Sometimes adults struggle against the inevitable, too.
Have you ever resisted God’s will or direction for your life when it didn’t match up with what you wanted—or wanted to avoid? I bet you have. I know I have.
Just as a diaper change was necessary for Jessica, so are the things God allows into our lives necessary in some way. So why do we resist? Why do we kick and scream in protest until the circumstances stop?
We do it for the same reasons Jessica did. Sometimes, we hope we can prevent a thing from happening if we resist strongly enough. Maybe if God knows how much I hate this, he’ll stop, we think. Other times, we resist out of anger that we can’t have our way. When we realize, as Jessica did, that the circumstance is going to happen and there’s nothing we can do to prevent it, we scream out our anger.
But friends, we need to remember what I wish Jessica could have understood: the one causing (or allowing) our circumstances knows what is best for us, and he wouldn’t force us to submit unless it were absolutely necessary.
Had Jessica submitted to my attempts to change her diaper, the whole experience would have been more pleasant (or at least, less odious), and it probably would have been over sooner. If we submit to God’s sovereignty in choosing our circumstances, we may find the whole experience less hateful. It may also be over sooner, because sometimes, God allows us to remain in a circumstance until we’ve learned a lesson. If we make that take longer than it has to, it’s our own fault that the circumstances endure.
I don’t know the circumstances of your life, and I won’t presume to tell you why they are what they are. But I do know that God only lets what is necessary through his filter of protection and into your life, and I know that resisting what he has chosen cannot possibly bring you any good.
Instead, stop resisting, and accept the comfort he offers. If Jessica had accepted the toy I was offering, she would have had a fun few seconds playing while I finished up. But in order to accept the toy, she would have had to submit to my will for her at that time. Even so must we submit to God’s will if we want to receive the comfort he offers. If we are too busy fighting him or railing against our circumstances, we’ll miss the opportunity to be comforted.
We will go through unpleasant circumstances in this lifetime. There’s no question about that. The only question is, how will we go through them.
Acts 26:14—It is hard for you to kick against the goads.
2 Chronicles 30:8—Do not be stiff-necked as your fathers were. Submit to the Lord.