You know, you typically wouldn’t expect having a second child to be as impactful on your spiritual experience as having your first.  However, as Micah Christian is growing into a toddler (-I can’t believe it!) and his personality is starting to come out, I’m learning so much more about God’s love and who He is.  I wanted to share some of those thoughts while they are so fresh in my mind:

1.  God loves each one of us as if we were the only person in the world. 
Now with marriage, you learn that your spouse loves you and only you.  That is to teach us how to love God only before all others.  After having a child, you learn to love (in a different way) the child that you created.  It shows a glimpse of how much God must love us, as we too were created after His own image.  Having my second child, I’ve learned that it is indeed possible to love another being just as much as your first creation.  It was difficult to imagine this was possible, until we had Micah!  As I now understand that God considers each one of us his sons and daughters, I realize how deep that love is.  It doesn’t matter how naughty, disobedient, or down-right evil we are!  He knows us so deeply (as a parent knows his/her children – but magnified) and He loves each of us unconditionally.  How humbling and amazing!

2.  God wants us to love one another.
Imanuel has had a few disagreements with other kids and some of them even resulted in a few pushes and shoves here and there.  It hurt me, yes, to see that other kids didn’t want to play with Imanuel or that they were bullying.  It hurt even more to see that Imanuel was being the bully.  But nothing could compare with the first time I saw that Imanuel get upset with Micah.  There is something about seeing your own children fighting.  In the parent’s mind, you always envision that your kids will be the best of friends, sharing fun times together, encouraging each other, understanding one another…after all, they have the same parents and share the same blood!  But in this early stage of the kids’ lives, seeing them unhappy with one another is a very fearful, painful experience.  (I don’t know if this will change once they are older…as I assume this would happen quite frequently! – Do you see why I wanted to share these powerful thoughts now?  🙂 
And so I think of God, and how sad He must feel when His own children don’t get along with one another!  It’s one thing to not get along with the “heathen” because they don’t understand us.  However, to fight or get upset with our brothers and sisters in Christ – those who should be our best friends and closest companions – that must be sad for Jesus.  Unity was one of His sincerest prayers.  It makes me want to avoid hurting other church members at all cost!  To stop the back-stabbing, gossiping, and insults!  If my two sons were to grow up and this is how they treated each other, how sad I would be!

3.  Differences in us makes us special.
In our mind’s eye, we can envision the perfect Christian person.   Obviously Jesus.  But many times we feel the need to change our personalities so we could be like Jesus.  However, seeing my two boys and how different their personalities are, yet how “perfect” they are, I’m realizing how God created us with such diversity and that we are to embrace it.  As I train and develop my two kids, I’ve come to realize that I should compare their characters to Jesus but allow their unique personalities to also shine for the glory of God.            
If we only look and contemplate our lives, we can often see how the Lord is trying so desperately to save our souls.  Each aspect of our lives, the major and insignificant, are given to point us to the One who so willingly gave His life so we, His children, can be reunited with our Father eternally.  And after several thousand years of being separated, what a joyful, blessed reunion that will be! 

I want to be there to finally meet my Father who gave/allowed experiences in my life, just to try to communicate how much He loves me.  How about you?