Loved and Constipated

The kid is constipated today. I've been told breast-fed babies have poopy diapers pretty regularly. Not my kid. He seems to store up his poop for 24 to 36 hours and then has an explosion that goes through at least three diapers and one outfit. It's always a bummer when it happens in the middle of the night.

For the hour or two prior to the explosion, he tends to be pretty fussy. I can usually tell he's trying to work something out. He's often at the very least whining, and more commonly wailing. Typically, he is quite content to just sit in my lap, but when he is working out his poop, he is often writhing around. He also wants to nurse more. It makes sense, after all, his tummy hurts and at four months, he's not old enough to be able to tell when he is experiencing hunger pains or is constipated. I will rub his little tummy and move his legs around to help him to work things out, or heaven forbid, put him on his stomach for tummy time. He reacts to any of those things like I have betrayed him on a level consistent with the worst arch nemesis in all of the Marvel movies (who is this, anyway? Thanos now?). He screams with his mouth wide open and his eyes squeezed shut, and no amount of my talking to him or trying to comfort him is heard.

This is so like me when difficult circumstances hit.

God is working idolatry out of me this week. I can tell because he's targeted huge areas of idolatry. I hurt my back (idol of self-sufficiency), we got three bills in one day totaling a ridiculously high amount (idol of security), and I still am not losing weight (idol of pride/appearance/identity). It hurts. I hurt. Literally, with the back pain, but emotionally and spiritually too. Since there are no coincidences, I know this is what God is doing in me. I still don't like it. I find myself wanting to squeeze my eyes shut and scream.

God loves me anyway.

Even as He is working on these areas of idolatry in me, working it out of me gently, firmly and with a patient hand, he is reminding me of his truth.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).

Paul's prayer for Christ's church is that they would understand how much God loves them. He wasn't praying for them to be more lovable, or that God would love them more, but that they would see how much God already loves them.

God loves me. Even when I am hurting and screaming against the pain. He still loves me. It's always true.

I am loved. Even when my back hurts and when I get bills and when, no matter how many calories I count, the pounds do not disappear, I am loved by the God of the universe.

Lord, make this truth a reality in my life today, even as I am hurting.