On His Feet Parenting

Timmy's bedtime is normally 8:30PM during the school week but as of late, Timmy has been a bit more of a handful at bedtime, insisting repeatedly that he should be allowed to stay up until midnight - he is older now after all.  After weeks of arguing the point with him, his dad "finally gives in" and allows him to stay up on the condition that he still has to get up for school on time.  "No problem" says a smug Timmy.

The first night, Timmy is excited at "getting his own way" and watches all kinds of tv shows until midnight, when he wanders into bed.  6:30AM seems to come earlier than normal and Timmy has some issues getting up and out the door on time.  He is not detered though.  That night, he again stays up until midnight although he is not quite as energetic as he was the night before.  It takes a few extra rousings to get Timmy up in the morning and his school day seems so very long.  Timmy's dad asks how things are going when he gets home and, defiantly, Timmy says they are going great, no problems at all and his dad leaves it at that.  Night three is not near as pleasant.  To make matters worse, Timmy watches somethinng he should not have and finds the little sleep he gets filled with nightmares.  6:30 may as well have been 2:00AM when the alarm rings.  He crawls out of bed, barely alive.  He cannot focus as school and fails a test he should have easily aced.  By the time he gets home, he can barely think clearly anymore.

At 8PM he has his pajamas on and is heading to his room.  His dad inquires about what he's doing.  Timmy confesses that maybe dad knew what he was doing with the 8:30 bedtime and that getting what he wanted, really, in the end was not a good thing after all - not even close.

Like Timmy's dad, God is an "on His feet" kind of parent to His children. The Bible tells us that He is jealous for us - He is not fond of having anything come inbetween us and Him. When we start to push back or rebel a bit, He points it out to us but He does not go over the top.  If we continue to be stubborn though, He will "allow" us to get our "own way" and do what we want.  Unfortunately though, it does not typically only take a few days for us to figure out that us getting our own way and doing our own thing, was not a good thing in any respect (sometimes we do learn quick, but is not the norm), but we do tend to learn eventually. How wonderful it would be if we only went through this once, but that is (very unfortunately) a rarity.  More often than not, we have at least a few times which our rebellious nature wins out over wisdom and common sense. But much like the "prodigal son" (Luke 15:11-32), when we hit that wall we find that He has been anxiously awaiting our return - with open arms...but YOU do have to stop running away first.