Who's in the Loop?

Something happened last night between my daughters and I'm still trying to figure out exactly what. I do know that it caught me very much by surprise.

Hannah, who is 10, went to bed first. A little while later I went to tell Kaelie, my 13 year-old to do the same. I looked all over the house for her and couldn't find her. Finally, I heard voices coming from Hannah's room. When I went in, I found them both crying and neither wanted to share what it was all about. When Kaelie left to go to her room, Hannah said everything was fine, that it was just "sister stuff." Once I returned to Kaelie's room to get her to bed, she also insisted that they were just having a much-needed talk and everything was okay. Fortunately, both of them went on to sleep and seemed fine this morning before school.

I still wish I knew what it was all about though. While I do have some inkling, and I'm happy that perhaps they are learning to work things out for themselves and to talk to each other like rational human beings instead of getting into screaming fights, it drives me crazy to be left out of the loop. I'm their mother and I love them and I want to be able to help.

God has really been teaching me a lot about leadership recently, and I think he's reminding me in this situation that a good leader equips and trains those she is leading so that they can do things for themselves without relying so much on her. I'm certainly not implying that my children will grow up and never need me again, because I know how much I still need my own mother. But it's important that they learn to do and handle things for themselves, confident in the knowledge that I am here for them.

Second, the fact that I feel left out of the loop makes me realize how much it must grieve the Lord when I leave him out. Sometimes when things come up, the first tendency is to go to my husband or a friend to help me through it, or to seek advice from self-help books or others who have faced similar situations. I need to make sure God, the one who made me and loves me and knows me inside and out, is the first one I call to rather than the last resort. Whatever the situation, he already knows it completely and desires to help me through it.

1 Peter 5:7 says "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." I like the word all in this verse. It tells me that I can go to God with anything. I've heard people say that they don't feel right bothering God with what they perceive to be small and petty problems, compared to the much bigger issues that other people may be facing. But God wants to be in the loop for all of it, and I want to have the kind of faith that trusts him to be big enough to handle all of it.

I'm glad my girls were able to talk things out with each other last night. I hope that when they each finally went on to bed, they also talked it out with the Lord.