Facing the (gi)ants

Note: The post below was inspired by the MOPs "Be You Bravely" challenge.  If you're a mom of a young child, please check out this amazing organization at www.mops.org. 

It was well past my regular bedtime as I finally crawled beneath the covers that night.  My husband was gone on another work trip, as had so often been the case since we moved to this new city for a year of training in his new job.  At the end of a long and lonely day chasing after our toddler son, I looked forward to finally snuggling under the warm blankets for a little sleep.

Just as I picked up my smartphone for one last email check before lights out, a streak of black flashed down its side. 
Startled, I dropped the phone in my lap and, seeing nothing, flipped it over to look at the case.  Sure enough, a little black ant was crawling over it—and there was another on the bedspread--make that four more—and on the sheets, the bed skirt, and the carpet!

Thankfully, I'd become well trained in the art of ant-defense since our move and in minutes was quickly vacuuming up the invaders, covering their entry point with bug spray, and stripping the covers off.  Half an hour later I was back in bed, trying to get comfortable again after another temporary victory against Team Sugar Ant.

It seems more often than not my life is not marked by moments of enormous courage against overwhelming obstacles, but rather against the many daily molehills my mind makes into mountains.  Motherhood has certainly shown up my everyday cowardice in painfully obvious ways.  For instance, there was the time I put off getting my son’s hair cut for almost a year because he had tantrummed so terribly at the first one.  Or the time I had to carry him screaming out of our first visit to the public library, only returning after nearly six months had passed (hey, at least it beats a year!) 

But then I remind myself of the courage and prayer that (eventually) got me to try again.  The leap of faith it took to leave behind my friends, my job, and my home of ten years to move to a big city and stay at home full-time, knowing we’d pack up in only a year to do it all again.  The bravery to take my baby boy to day care the first time at six weeks old, or to try (just one more time) to get him to sleep at night.  Life is, it seems, one long trail of ants—little challenges and failures that like to invade our warm, happy comfort zone of success and assault our assertions that “I got this.”

Because I don’t have it, not even a little.  But God does.  He’s all the strength, all the courage, all the energy I have and regularly need just to stand up one more time and try again.  When I count my successes in Him I’m encouraged to face the future, just like David’s encounters with wild predators as a shepherd gave him boldness in the face of the giant Goliath:

“Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.  The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.” (1 Samuel 17:36-37).

If God is with me, who can be against me?  The testimonies of His faithfulness are the rocks in my slingshot, the arrows in my quiver as I face the (gi)ants one more time.