It’s amazing how much parenting teaches you about you. The biggest lessons I’m learning right now have to do with how God parents me.

I’m realizing how little I actually understand. Like Lily. She knows what she wants, but she rarely knows what she needs. We are saying no to her a lot at this point. No you can’t touch that. No you can’t eat that. No….

And it is for her good! You see, we know what she needs. The boundaries we set for her are in place because we love her. But it is beyond her capacity to understand why.

How much greater is the gap between God and me than me and my daughter?

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” – Is. 55:8-9

I don’t know what I need. 

I’ve done some reflecting over the past few weeks on times where I haven’t gotten what I wanted. Where I’ve prayed and asked God for a certain outcome and it didn’t happen. What blows me away is that when I look back on those times now, several years down the road, I am grateful that I didn’t get what I wanted. I see how God was guiding me, even through disappointment, to where He wanted me to be.

We don’t always have that kind of clarity when we look back. Sometimes, we just can’t see the why.

But sometimes, we can – and we get a glimpse of how God fathers us. That He knows what we need, even when we don’t. He loves us enough to lead us away from what we want at times, as painful as it is, so that we will be where He wants us to be. For our good.