Lana has always been my humbling child. By that I mean she’s kept me humble.  With Mariah, we thought we were Ah-MAZING parents.  She was so obedient, the neatest eater, calm and reserved, cautious…. it goes on and on.  It was all because of our fabulous parenting skills of course!

Then our Lana came along.  Sweet, bubbly, silly, bouncy, smile and flirt with everyone Lana has humbled us.

There have been so many times I’ve thought she’d “never” be able to do something….sleep through the night, eat from a plate, hold my hand when walking, walk up the stairs on her own without screaming and banging her head on the wall so she’d get an “owie” and we’d pick her up (yeah, that happened a lot), eat with a fork, lay down for a diaper change, sleep in a toddler bed…..the list goes on and on I tell ya.  It seemed like everything we tried to teach her she rebelled against. And by rebel, I mean laugh in our face when we told her no. It didn’t help that she knows how to work a pouty face, because we gave in too many times.

But, you know what? She’s learned all of those things, and more.  And we survived.

It was so hard during the battles and tantrums to think there was any light at the end of the tunnel. That any progress would be made. Because, let’s face it, some of those tunnels were months long and we were lacking in the sleep department.

But we stuck with it, and we made it. Well, out of those tunnels at least – we’re currently working on the whining. Oh the whining!

Looking back and thinking about how we made it through, makes me wonder if God ever feels like I’m “never” going to get something. I mean, technically, he doesn’t I suppose since he knows the end result and all  – he knows how long the tunnel is and how things will look on the other side. But all that omniscient business aside, there are times when it takes me FOREVER to “get it” sometimes.  You may call it slow – I’ll call it stubborn.

Like how it took me YEARS to finally understand I don’t need to have it all together before I decide to follow God – in fact I’ll never really have it all together because he’s always working on me (hence the title of this blog).  Or how about how long it took me want to read my Bible again?  Or all that time I wasted relying on myself for everything instead of taking things to Him in prayer? And don’t even get me started on all the things I’m still working through….

And God waits. He waits so patiently. He sees my ugly fits and my pouty faces. He hears my whining. And he waits. He reminds me over and over again in his word how I should behave, how I should walk, how I should come to him. And eventually I’ll get it.  Eventually I’ll become disciplined enough to follow him better than I do today.

I hope I can learn to wait and know there’s light at the end of the tunnel as a parent. Because there are many, many long tunnels ahead.