Oh Facebook memories…I just can’t.  Some days it is funny things my kids say and some days it is who I became friends with, but on the day with the pictures of my kids when they were little???  I can’t.

This is what popped up from 4 years ago today…he was 3 with the cutest cheeks and curliest hair.  My heart literally hurts knowing these days are gone and that little face is growing up.  I texted Adam and told him this picture made me cry and hurt all at once.  (And not because I missed the days when I only had 1 chin.)  It’s the innocence and the carefree smile and the days of just hanging out.  The days where the hardest questions asked were, “will you play with me? and can I have a snack?” As hard as those days were, they were so much easier.

Now, we are dealing with the world and doing our best to walk through it with these kids we’ve been entrusted with.  It is a hard, hard world.  What do you say when your kid asks why they can’t be on social media and hears the message “I don’t fit in?”  What do you say when your kid gets picked last at recess every day and hear the message “I’m not wanted?”  What do you do when the hard questions come about the world and your answers are different from those shouting loudest?  What do you tell your kid when they hear the message “I’m not good enough?”  What do you do when your life and beliefs are countercultural?

You don’t get these questions when they are 3…there are no star basketball players or toddler social media groups.  There are days with no naps and too much sugar and tantrums and crying, yes.  But neither of my kids asked me at 3 why Matt Lauer wasn’t on the Today Show anymore.  Neither of them cried and told me they weren’t good enough.

This world.  Oh, this world.  Even with people shouting to be kind, it is a hard, mean, messy place right now.  We’re kind until your political views don’t match mine.  We’re kind until your religious views don’t match mine.  We’re kind until you say something that I don’t agree with.  Kindness is conditional but it doesn’t have to be.

We’re getting ready to celebrate Christmas – a day where love came down.  Where it wasn’t conditional.  God looked down on us and knew we were a huge hot mess and needed some help.  He sent help.  He sent love and kindness and compassion in the form of a baby.

I wonder if Mary felt the way I do as I watch my kids grow.  Sure they didn’t face the same problems with social media and mean girls but there was a price on Jesus’s head from the day he was born, just look at King Herod.  Did Mary’s heart hurt when she thought back to the 3-year-old face of her baby boy?  Did she want to cry why religious leaders tried to trip him up?  How did she not completely collapse when he was arrested and killed?  She was human so I’m sure she had her moments but from the moment the angel visited her, she said, “May your word to me be fulfilled.”  I see such willingness and surrender.

And this is where my rambling circles back around to those cute curls of my 3-year-old boy…surrender.  I believe these kids are not my own.  They were born for a purpose, one greater than I know.  I have to surrender, every day, and ask that I get out of the way and not mess it up.  Hillsong United has a song called “I Surrender” and it came on as I was looking at that picture.  I’m telling you – I have to surrender every day, all day long.  Because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what I physically accomplished but did I draw near and demonstrate the unconditional love that Jesus gave me?  (And please don’t read this like I’m golden and have it all together…I’m just trying to learn to breathe in Jesus just like air.)

The world isn’t going to get any better.  With more technology and selfishness (lets call an ace an ace, here) it just isn’t.  My kids don’t need phones and technology and stuff, they need me.  They need Adam.  They need Jesus.  They need us to navigate the rough waters and teach them where to find the answers.  But we can’t help with that unless we are fully surrendered, palms open and praying through the day.

So, for all of you moms and dads in the trenches with littles, take time to take the picture that will one day make your heart hurt more than you can imagine, and hang in there.  Because they will sleep through the night and they will dress themselves but they will also have a million questions that are hard.  So take that picture out and remember the time when it was a little easier and then take a deep breath because there is One who has the answers, if we just surrender and ask.