Shortly after her birth I met my new great-niece. She was just five weeks old and a bundle of joy for everyone around her. I saw clearly, however, as she cried out whenever she was in discomfort, how she was also a bundle of intense needs.

She cried when she was hungry. She wiggled and whimpered when she needed to be changed. She wailed when she was uncomfortable in the arms of someone other than her parents. The wired, tired cry told her parents that she was too tired to even settle down for sleep. With her little lungs she made it quite clear to everyone when she was in need.

I heard these words in my heart:

“You are just as helpless, and lovely, and loved as this tiny baby. She isn’t doing a single thing to ingratiate herself to anyone, other than to just be. Yet she is so endearing as she expresses what she needs and her parents jump to be there at her side, providing what she can’t provide for herself.”

“Accept your neediness and My Love….”

It takes a huge act of courage to tell someone we need something. We might be refused. We might be rejected. We might be ridiculed for what we can’t do ourselves. This dynamic, familiar to us all, looks one way as kids and another way when we are in the height of our adult years, and still another when we are in our senior years. To admit we can’t do something that is essential to a job we hold is risky. To admit we can no longer accomplish what is required for basic daily living may feel humiliating. To surrender what we really want to happen for ourselves or for another could feel like failure. Only the courageous are willing to be as honest as a baby about what they are undergoing, feeling, and needing.

One thing that will help you become the Child you are…

Tell God what you need, what you are experiencing, what’s happening to you and the way it makes you feel about your own worth, your past, your future….

Don’t be afraid to wail in the night. Be courageous and make your demands….

…and then listen….

In these moments of intense realness, you may find yourself coming face-to-face with a weakness or a wound that you are ready for the Holy Spirit to heal. There may be something that you realize you are ready to relinquish now. Perhaps you realize it isn’t as important as it was. The tears and wrenching regret may even be the space where you enter deeply into the fresh ground of your heart, prepared by Jesus for the seed of new life.

I cry out loudly to God,
    loudly I plead with God for mercy.
I spill out all my complaints before him,
    and spell out my troubles in detail:

“As I sink in despair, my spirit ebbing away,
    you know how I’m feeling…” (Psalm 142 MSG)

Image by jun yang from Pixabay