Bitter

I was washing baby bottles in the kitchen. A task my wife and I both do and both find tiring. My mother in law was working in the kitchen too. She never really stops.

“I feel worn out, having a baby.” I confessed. “Did you ever feel like that?”

“Of course.” she replied. Her voice kind but with no energy for fluff.

“What did you do?”

“I turned bitter. But I was 17. And all alone. You have family here with you. So you don’t have to do what I did.”

“I want to turn bitter too I complained.”

The same week, someone laid things out just as simply for me.

“Do you want to be happy or unhappy? You’ve got both options.”

I’m going to try to live the opposite of bitter in this chaos season. But to make that decision I need to do more than grit my teeth and force myself to feel good. That kind of effort is futile. To have a joyful and grateful experience while we raise this baby, I need to keep a healthy perspective and stay directly connected to God.

I have learned two simple techniques to stay connected to God in the rush of day to day life. One is saying a prayer first thing in the morning while I do my morning stretches. I try to use that moment to speak gratefully to God and to worship Him. On days where my energy is really low I try to tell Him I’m struggling and ask for help, A second thing that has been helping me is remembering God every time my watch marks the hour. I have been speaking the phrase “God is with me” to myself when I hear the chime. In times of weariness I have also used the chime to make an easy petition “God help me.”

For the second piece, the perspective, I will recommend a book and a short excerpt. I am about a fourth of the way through John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life” and hope to finish the whole thing before the end of Christmas break. The teachings are heavy and some are unattractive at first glance, but I think there is an abundant amount of truth and wisdom in this book. The excerpt is from C.S. Lewis and he writes it as if one demon is speaking to another. He imagines two demons speaking to each other about how to keep men from godliness. Lewis starts out the passage highlighting how humans become angry when they believe that they are the owners of their time and that time is demanded of them in a way that they do not desire. He points out that the anger is greater when the demand for time is a surprise in a moment they expected to use selfishly. After pointing this out, Lewis delivers the unexpected blow from the words of his imagined demon (creatively using the title the Enemy to describe God)

“...if the Enemy appeared to man in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, the man would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said ‘Now you may go and amuse yourself’. “

When I read that passage two months ago I was completely struck by that concept of a grateful half hour. How relieved and spoiled I would feel if God granted me a half hour of personal time in the midst of a crucial project He asked of me. I needed, as a wise friend pointed out, to see the holy responsibility of raising my child as a mission directly and divinely assigned to me by God.

Seek this month to stay directly connected to our God and to keep true perspective about what this life is. In these two ways you will live an “un-bitter” life and you will do g

reat work for the Lord.