Whining and Weaning

Feels like yesterday that Elijah was born, and now he's fourteen months old! I remember wondering if I was EVER going to be done nursing. Some days I felt so trapped by the schedule and limitations nursing imposed. But I would not change a thing. What a blessing to be able to provide for your baby.

So over the course of the last few months, I've gradually taken out a nursing period, leaving us with just the morning feeding. A few days ago, I decided it was time. We will be gone for three nights in the middle of October, and we knew he needed to be weaned by then. I wanted to give him the chance to get used to not nursing with us here, before we left him.

The last three mornings have been PAINFUL. Physically, yes...a little. But emotionally, a ton. He's been so upset and fussy, and I've felt so sad.

Who knew? After fourteen months, I didn't expect to be so sad. But I feel so badly for him because I can't explain why I'm taking away the one thing he's known since birth. Mommyhood is hard. Transitions happen so quickly. If I'm this sad over weaning, how am I going to feel about college?!

But Praise be to God, who took me from a place of total darkness (depression) and enlightened my life to the fullest measure! I thought I would never make it through those first few months, and now I would do it a hundred times over. :)

Dependence

"Do everything in dependence on Me." That's what the Lord continually speaks to me. Sometimes hourly, always daily. I find myself doing, doing, doing......and depending less. Until I hit the wall. You know the wall. The really painful brick one that comes out of nowhere. Like maybe when you've had a busy day and your husband says something like, "do I have any clean undershirts?" (And the answer is "no"). There's the wall. And you lose it.

That's when I know I'm depending less.

My heart desires this constant dependence, my heart NEEDS this. John 15:5 reminds us to abide in Him - only then do we produce fruit. Because it's Christ IN us producing the fruit as we abide in Him. Pretty amazing.

The season we're in is wonderfully hard. :) As new staffers with Campus Crusade, we are raising our financial support. So we work our daytime jobs and then raise support evenings and weekends. Brent's full-time job ends October 1st, so we are both looking for full/part time work to get us by until we have enough support coming in to scale back. We'd love for that to be sooner rather than later. And our home is for sale.

Dependence on Him is all we have. We fully believe He does not call the equipped, He equips the called. And each day He equips us with exactly what we need for that day. And that is GOOD. He is Good.