Please do not judge my parenting by this post

Most of what I learn about God in all honesty doesn't come from the scriptures as it maybe should, but instead from my three year old daughter.  Being a dad has opened my eyes in a completely new way to see God in a new light, as I hear it does for most dads.  

When Brek was a still a baby she often had a difficult time going to sleep, mainly in the daytime for naps.  I got to be home a few days a week with her and so the only way I could get her to sleep was to lay her in our bed and to fall asleep or to pretend to fall asleep next to her.  She would get herself so worked up that it was super hard to get her to relax and go to sleep.  So I would lay down, put my arm under her and take very deep and long breaths so she could hear me and feel me breathing.  She'd be crying or screaming and I would just lay down next to her and basically demonstrate sleeping.  Sometimes I would lay there just breathing and closing my eyes pretending to sleep for like a half hour or more.  Eventually she would match her rhythm of breathing with mine and calm down, and soon after be asleep.  Shortly after I would try to sneak out and hope she didn't hear me.  I did this all the time, it was the only way to get her to sleep. 

I bring this up because now over three years later she's doing a similar thing.  At night she completely refuses to go to bed or to even go near her room.  She begs to sleep in our room, so we let her fall asleep in our bed.  She begs for one of us, usually me oddly enough, to lay down with her.  Just tonight she was so tired but fighting sleep so much that I just had to lay there like I used to, pretending to sleep despite her rants and complaints.  I was just laying there, breathing deeply and overly loud to prove my point that sleeping is a wonderful thing and that she should just calm down.  

But then all these thoughts came into my head like how much like Brek I must be to God.  All the time I just go about my stuff pretending to know what I'm doing but all along God is just sitting there wanting me to just be able to listen long enough to hear the rhythm of His breathing and to simply get in line with it.  The beauty of the incarnation, and the part about God that I've learned most through my kids, is that God doesn't just put us in our bed and tell us to go to sleep, even though we're kicking and screaming.  No, for some reason He decided to come and lay down next to us and show us what it looks like to follow Him.  He showed us what sleeping looks like, and simply asks us to follow His lead.  Stop talking about wanting our mommy, or to read the book for the 17th time, or to get more juice, or that we need another snack.  What He really seems to want is for us to drop the excuses and simply be like Him.  For crying out loud He's right next to us, we just need to let our breathing become like His.  We just need to follow His lead.  

Sometimes I think I make it harder and more complicated than it needs to be.