Letter to My Boys

Dear boys,

There are many things in my heart for you that don't make it into everyday conversation. You little cowboys make every day an adventure, and I love it.

The days are also full of needs... The need for patience. The need for a kiss for a skinned knee. For mediation of squabbles over a ball. For reminders that we do not make rude jokes. For 3 meals, 2 snacks, and the supply of countless missing or empty water bottles. Need for naps, feedings, changed diapers, sweet kisses, wiped noses. Need for Bible stories, blessings before bedtime, snuggles under special blankets.

Some needs I can meet (not as many as I might think, though). But woven through all the needs are reminders of how much I am not capable of supplying for you. In fact, all of your deepest and truest needs are outside of the scope of my care. And each day's needs bring a reminder of my own needs. And in turn, they pile up and bear down until I am pressed to a decision: what will I do with all this need?

The inclination is to bear them. To carry and heft all the needs around, getting snippy with those who add an extra need to the pile and layering anxiety, frustration, and anger into the mix of them.

It's an inborn trait, but it is not the right way. God doesn't give us needs so that we will buckle down and work harder. That we will be the martyr, always giving and never filled. That we will cast about for someone to blame for the overwhelming need that seeps into every crack of day and night. All that mound of needs comes with a call to bring them to bigger shoulders, roll them onto the vast, caring hand of One who can do what I never can.

You'll face this place of need too, my sons. Your days will bring their own burdens. Your shoulders will feel their own load. And it is my great prayer for you that as the need grows, you will daily, habitually, constantly, faithfully roll that load into the hands of your tender Savior. I pray that you will move toward need, not in a self-important hero mentality, but with the confidence of one who knows the supreme Need Meeter and is not afraid of sinking His boat with your own desperate needs or those of others.

I pray that God might draw you to moment-by-moment conversation with Him, to know the right word to say in a heated moment, to release what worries you, to find an inner supply of joy that doesn't run dry even when circumstances take a sour turn.

We pray for lost books and missing toys. We pray for the fire trucks and ambulances that pass with sirens. We pray for sweet sleep at night and for help to show kindness to one another. We pray for help to put away grumbling and with God's help to have a cheerful heart.

How I pray that God will take these little prayers and weave them into your heart as fibers of habit and hope that will deepen and multiply as you grow.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

Always in a time of need,
Your momma