The Toughest Lesson God Wants Us to Learn

I’m excited to introduce an author friend, Chip Mattis. I know you will enjoy his words about dads and an important lesson we learn from our heavenly Father. Chip recently released a children’s book reflecting the love of a father for his little girl, Under the Dancing Tree. I purchased it for my grandchildren and will discuss it more at the end of this post.

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There is one undeniable, incontrovertible truth when it comes to children: they don’t sit still.

My wife is the standard for self-control. Even when she was little, she couldn’t sit still. Crawling into bed with her parents one night after a nightmare, she tossed and turned.

“Be still,” her dad said.

So she went rigid and eventually fell asleep lying flat as a board.

My son can’t sit at the table very long. He likes to sit up, kneeling one leg on the chair and standing on the floor with the other. Or walk around the kitchen some. Or lean on the table and hover both feet off the ground. It’s both bothersome and funny. 

“Sit down and chill out, man.” 

My daughter squirms in her seat, delaying eating her food. She flips her head around to look at me upside-down. Then she’ll stretch way out under the table to play footsie with my wife. 

“Baby, sit still.”

My kids’ restlessness at the dinner table is ridiculous.

Learn to Be Still: When I’m Restless

But the truth is, I’m no different. I’m just as restless. It might not be a dinner table restlessness where the wiggles need to get free. It’s a spiritual restlessness, a feeling that if I sit still I’ll fail, I’ll miss something. The feeling of anxiety that I’m supposed to be doing a particular thing at a particular time. The sense of not wanting to displease the people I love or, worst of all, displease God.

But in each of those moments of restless anxiety, there is God my Father, assuring me I have nothing to fear. Through each stage of my life, God is tending to me like a garden, pruning where I’ve grown wild, watering me when I’m dry, shining on me when I’m cloudy. 

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