Where the power comes from ....

I heard a wonderful mum of 6 girls say this week that we are not super mums, we are super natural mums!
So true!
While I'm not going to change the title of my blog, its awesome to be reminded that the real power comes from God!
He created our kids. He made them individually unique and wonderful, He intricately designed their minds and planted wonderfully imaginative dreams inside them. He knows their future. He knows their thoughts. He knows who they will marry. He has amazing plans for them.
And He plops all of that into our hands as a completely smoochable bundle of pooping and spewing, gurgling, goo-ing and gaa-ing baby.
Do you remember bringing the first one home from hospital? I remember leaving the hospital and walking past the reception desk and asking 'can I take him home now?' (of course in Japanese) and thinking... I can just walk out of here with this baby... no guidebook... no accountability...i don't have to pay anything... he's free... really you trust us to care for him?
What a bizarre feeling... a bit like being given the keys to some brand new expensive sports car and having no idea how to drive it, where to put the keys, what all the buttons do... and where are the brakes!
But for some reason, God trusts us with this little life.
All I can do is hold out this crying baby and look up to God and say "help".
I find that whenever I think that I have to have it all together, whenever I'm trying my very best, whenever I'm trying to control every variable and put on my biggest smile, that really I feel so weak and strained and stressed and tired and completely incapable and afraid.
But when I shrug my shoulders, collapse on my knees (or on my face), when I hand it all over to Him and say "I really have no idea, help me", that's when His presence comes, thats when His peace comes - above all my limited understanding - and He says "its ok, I'm here".
Without Him we're empty vessels wandering around aimlessly. But with Him we have life in abundance and fullness. In my weakness, He is my strength. In my uselessness, His grace is enough, it carries me, it sustains me.