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We have been watching old family videos lately from when our children were very young.
“I’m so grateful we have these videos,” I told my husband, “because there is so much I don’t remember from those chaotic years.”
The ‘chaotic’ years
“Those chaotic years” consisted of caring for our four children who ranged in age from zero to six years old.
The days and nights ran together in a blur, held together by a veil of thin sleep. So much happened in a day, it seemed, from feeding and changing to cleaning and laundering, from bandaging boo-boos to teaching the children to read and pray and love.
In that season of motherhood exhaustion, I’m not sure I recognized God in all of the day-to-day duties that consumed me. In fact, I’m confident I didn’t. I was so caught up in the doing and the making and the wiping and the helping that I couldn’t see Him. I was just too tired.
But now the children are older, and sleep is a more regular occurrence. In a different season now, I have time to breathe and pause and reflect.
And looking back on these videos, I see the piles of laundry, the toys strewn across the floor, the books scattered everywhere, the evidence of young creative minds left out on the table.
And, amazingly, I see God.
If God is Love, then He has been there in the forming of our little family all along, even when I was too tired to notice. The proof is in the videos.
Take, for example, the Christmas video of our one-year-old son grabbing hold of his three-year-old sister’s brand-new gigantic stuffed snowman named “Olaf” (yes, from the movie Frozen).
“That’s my Olaf!” shouts his sister, rushing over to make her claim clear. “But it’s okay, we can share Olaf.” And then she gives her brother a giant hug.
Seeing with new eyes
What I missed the first time around I’m seeing now with new eyes. And now I see that God is evident in the everyday actions of our children — then and now.
God has always been so close, and yet I go through times during which I treat Him as if He is so far away — untouchable, unreachable — especially during personal struggles or challenging times. But it has never been Him who has done the leaving. It’s me — with my human failings of tiredness or a closed heart or sinful ways — who has withdrawn from Him.
Somehow, amid the difficulties and darkness of this past year, I’d begun to lose sight of Him again.
And yet, He was with me day after day in people all around me, and I’m beginning to recognize Him again — in the beautiful laughter of my children, the steady strength of my husband, the patient listening ear of a friend, the kind words of a sister, the priceless memories of our family’s growing-up years.
“When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Even though I with my human shortcomings falter time and time again, God in His faithfulness does not. He has always been there, giving me reminders at times I need them most.
On Christmas morning, for example, this is the quote my daughter gifted me in her handmade framed artwork [see above]: “God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial He will also provide a way out” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
With tearful eyes, I clung to the gift from both my daughter and God, for she couldn’t have known how deeply that particular quote spoke to me at that moment. Only He knew. And I took it as a sign that He’d never left me after all — and never would. What a gift.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
With new eyes, I look now to the coming year with hope and a renewed sense that God indeed holds us in His hands. Just as He has, all along.
I have videos to prove it.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a member of St. John the Baptist Parish, Waunakee.