On the other side of the door

Last night I was feeling the glass ceiling of seemingly unanswered prayer. Annelise has been spitting up (a euphemism for full-on puke) much more the last several days, and teething is my new hypothesis after much mommy-research of which I'll spare you. (But if your child is suffering a like malady, feel free to contact me to commiserate!) I finally hit my limit, which happens now and then, and took it out on Steve, which also happens now and then, poor man.

Later when I semi-apologized, I said, "Actually it's God I'm mad at. I just feel like He's not answering my prayers. Why does He have to answer some and not others? Why can't He just do it all?" I can be as young and pouty as my baby sometimes. But, that's how I was feeling, and thank God I can voice my feelings, however childish, to my sweet wise husband.

Later still, when Annelise was whimpering in her bed, the teething-I'm-trying-to-go-to-sleep-but-can't whimper, it was late, but I kept getting out of bed to go listen to her and pray by her door. Steve had tried to close our door and listen himself, to help me go to sleep, but I just can't sleep, I told him, til babykins is sweetly sleeping. Then came the revelation from on High, that usually follows a particularly childish but honest blurt from my lips:

Annelise probably thinks I don't care, because I'm letting her whimper in her bed and fall asleep on her own. But I have no choice...it's the only way she's going to fall onto a happy sleep. (We had already rocked her.) And she has no idea that I can't sleep until she does. So with our Heavenly Father, who loves us even more (really? wow) than we love our own children. We think He doesn't hear, doesn't care. But He's perched, listening, waiting, watching, hanging on every breath, just on the other side of our door.