Seven Months and Crawling — Small Stories of a Big God

For who is God besides the Lord? And who is the Rock except our God?

It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure.

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights.

2 Samuel 22:32-34 (NIV)

This is the way we grow, I think, as I watch his sturdy little calves push him across the blanket and propel him around the room. It is the room where I watched my son take his first steps, delighting his dad and me, that evening after day-care and work.

Now my grandson explores the peach quilt with bunnies in a basket and three white kittens in a teacup that was his mother’s. He is all reaching hands and army crawl; grunting his baby sounds and breathing hard with exertion. I become his mountain he must climb, pulling up over my extended legs to get to the other side.

This is a new stage, this determination and hard-fought struggle to get across the room, to climb the mountains in front of him. This baby is determined to walk soon.

He face-plants coming down the sharp drop-off of my leg, rolls over, and lays his head down for a moment. Rest. Breathe. He lifts his head again and is immediately attracted to something else across the room that needs to be explored; the rockers of the antique Heywood-Wakefield chair.

That rocking chair is one of the very few things that survived the fire that burned the rental house down where Jeff was living when he and I met. It was sifting through the ashes of the fire that I realized I couldn’t chance spending another night away from Jeff and needed to convince him to marry me so we could live happily ever after. And I could rock my babies to come in that rocking chair.

As I watch this baby of my baby crawl, I realize I want this single-minded fight in my spirit.

God has placed me in a safe room under his watchful eye. I crawl across a quilt of His provision. My legs are strong from years of pushing forward.

The hills that seem like mountains challenge me but are scalable with a gentle hand from my loving Father.

There have been fires of refinement along the way, but God has brought me safely through the flames and rocked me in his arms and nourished me.

Lord, do not allow me to become discouraged and give up. Maybe all I need is to put my head down for a moment, take another few resting breaths and start again.