He knows

Lately (okay, the past two years) I have found it difficult to do the things I feel bring me close to God -- praying, reading the Bible, participating in worship. There's a lot of reasons for this -- the main ones are having small children, which means not much spare time, and starting our own 'emerging church', which means we have different kinds of worship (and also, unfortunately, that we don't yet know many other Christians to encourage us). But there's more to it than that, some of it involves my own laziness, some of it a feeling of ennui and over-familiarity when I pick up the Bible, some of it a serious rethinking of what my faith really means, and separating out my(American evangelical) notions of Jesus and salvation from what is really true.

And all this has been difficult, and made me feel pretty guilty at times. But I'm trying to make a comeback, so to speak, and I the other day I read a little devotion which mentioned the verse about God knowing how many hairs are on your head (Matthew 10:30). I thought about how that could mean literally (God must get frustrated when we get a haircut, or when, like I am experiencing right now, moms go through the post-pregnancy hair loss). But I think Jesus is just being more (extravagantly) figurative here -- God knows us SO well. He even knows what we don't know -- I don't know how many hairs are on my head. But HE knows me better than I know myself.

I thought about how I can tell when Bupsy is tired or unwell just by looking at her eyes. I can tell when she is just about to lose it becuase we've been in the shops for too long. I can tell when she's feeling jealous of her baby brother and needs a cuddle. The Boyo I'm just getting to know, but already I can tell when he's crying because he's hungry, or when he is crying because he wants to be asleep. Sometimes I know them better than they know themselves, and I have to help them to feel better.

God knows what I'm going through, even better than I do. He knows, and understands, and I don't have to feel guilty, because He's right there to help me through it.