"I got this!"

“Alex said my doll is dumb,” Ellie cried in an almost incomprehensible tone, like her toe had just been cut off. Normally I have no problem exposing the silliness of this type of ridiculous drama and bringing these problems down to size. But today was different. I was trying to get some bookkeeping done for church and my delightful computer program kept “unexpectedly quitting.” Not to mention that summer kid entertaining had already zapped my energy and excessive crying as the response to everything was leaving 2 out of my 3 kids seeming more like toddlers than elementary age kids. I was about to lose it.

Suddenly Chaz walked through the door, seeing my look of desperation, grabbed the whining kid and headed downstairs.  “I got this,” he yelled on his way down.

As much as I love motherhood, nothing has humbled me, stretched my limits to breaking and beyond, and painfully built my character more.  And as most parents experience, my kids have taken my ability to worry to heights I never imagined possible. Are they growing normally? Are they eating enough vegetables? Are they reading well enough for their grade level? Is that jerk kid on the bus going to bully my son again?

I am a master of worrying.  I even invent things to worry about when there is nothing immediately on the horizon. But a couple of years ago, when I was going through some other tough stuff, a verse in Isaiah popped off the page and hit me right in the heart.  “All your children will be taught by the Lord and great will be their peace” (54:13). If you’ve ever had the Lord “speak” a verse to you, then you know what I mean.  You may have skimmed over it a dozen times before but suddenly the words of that verse explode at you on the page. You know to pay attention cause God is about to reveal a new aspect of His character to you personally, experientially.  The Lord has proved the strength of His promises to me over and over, and I knew that this time, I had discovered gold.

But what if they get cancer and then get an untreatable staph infection that I hear about all the time? Or what if they get caught up with a bad group of friends, start doing drugs and wind up dead in a ditch somewhere? (my negative imagination knows no bounds). Truth: “All your children will be taught by the Lord and great will be their peace.” Yes I know they will have their share of struggles. Those seasons in the desert tend to be the best times of maturity and growth. But I can believe His truth and expect to see His Word ultimately come to pass.

Just as Chaz came and rescued me from a difficult situation, I often feel the Lord say “I got this,” when I’m greeted in the morning with a fresh batch of worries. He is my God and Protector who is big enough to handle it all. “I got this.”