Lesson from the Fall

This is my middle child. She has always been super quiet but now that she's learning a lot of words, her 3 year old vocabulary far exceeds any other 3 year old I know. For example, she will tell you all these stories about her Mommy Emma who is trapped under water with the Octonauts in the fire. In the last 4 hours she has used words/phrases like "Fantastic", "Wonderful" and "You got it, dude!" As verbal as she is, her passions are also very extreme. She will disobey and then cry because she fears that "God doesn't love her anymore" (her words). After we explain that God's love, and our love, isn't changed by her behavior, she will eventually calm down. She is also our most stubborn child. Case in point, tonight I was getting my 3 kiddos ready for bed while Nate was out seeing a movie. I tell her to go sit on the potty and here is our conversation:

Me: Emma, go sit on the potty!

Emma: Mommy, I just sit on the potty.

M: I know you sat on the potty at supper time but it's time for bed and since you peed in your clothes last night, I want to be sure your pee pee is all out before bed. 

E: (Makes more grumbles about why she shouldn't sit on the potty)

M: Emma, I told you what to do so now you need to obey. Please stop talking back to mommy and go obey.

E: (More grumbling)

M: Emma, stop talking and go sit on the potty.

E: (Looking at the wall) I'm just gonna stop talking now!!! (with all the sass she could muster)

Conversations like this are very common. After this fiasco, I was so ready to get them in to bed and then I remembered that Daddy, the awesome story teller, wasn't here to perform his task and the eyes would look to me to do this. I made a deal with them that Daddy can do all the made-up stories and when Mommy puts them to bed, I will read them a book and sing them a song...stick with your strengths, right?!? They give me the "Jesus Storybook Bible" and ask me to read the one about the snake. I begin reading about The Fall and God chooses to use that moment to prick my heart. 

Talk about eye opening...seeing Eve disobey and believe the lie over the truth and then reading of how her bad choices made God's heart break really reminded me that this hurt that I feel, that I often mask with frustration, over my children's disobedience is not unknown to God. He felt it too! As I read the story from the eyes of a parent, I understand His heartbreak over sin a little better. Then, the final words of the story, as always happens, leave me in tears as I read God's promise to me and God's promise to my children: "It will not always be so!" So grateful that though sin entered, the consequences and pain of them...more in my face some days than others...will not always be so. That even in God's decision to take Adam & Eve out of the Garden, He wasn't being mean but continuing to care for them. He even made clothes for them. It was a great opportunity to talk with my kiddos about how my responses to their sin aka consequences aren't made because I'm trying to be mean but because I'm taking care of them. Thankful for perspective and thankful that "It will not always be so!" The Promise of redemption that Adam & Eve looked for and I have is such a humbling and applicable thing!!!