“He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; He shall gather the lambs in His arms and carry them in His bosom and shall gently lead those that are with young.”
My little boy hates going to bed. Almost since the day he was born, naptime has been an ever-changing scene of lullabies and rockings and swayings and shushings. Sometimes with all the lights on, sometimes with all the lights off. Sometimes when he’s only been up for an hour, sometimes when he’s been up for three. What worked last week doesn’t necessarily work this week.
These days he goes to sleep to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me” and “The Birds Upon the Treetops” while I pace the floor with him, and it’s almost like clockwork the way he fights it kicking and screaming and then suddenly is done and quietly sucks his binky till his eyelids fall shut. Then I sit in the rocker with him and feel the heavy breaths that move him in my arms and look down at his relaxed face and his little open mouth and think of how many more times I’ll have to do this . . . and how many more times I’ll wish I could.
It’s too easy for me to look at motherhood as a seemingly never-ending road before me . . . that as this baby grows, another will take his place, and whatever I missed or was distracted from with this baby I’ll make up for with the next. But there is no guarantee of a next, and this one is so precious and so priceless that I can’t afford to miss any of these moments with him . . . so I’ll listen to him breathe, and I’ll marvel at how perfect he is, and I’ll hold him close as long as he lets me.
But back to the song at the beginning of the post. It’s what I was singing to Alec as he went to sleep this time around. “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd . . .” So fitting for these days. Such a promise for the weary, for the weak, for the mothers with babies who fight sleep or cry too much or are sick or . . . you name it.
The first days and weeks after Alec was born were hard ones for me. A pretty severe case of the baby blues saw to that. But on days when it felt like I’d never be happy again, this song would come into my head, and even though I wasn’t sure I could believe it then, the last line almost always made me cry. “. . . And shall gently lead those that are with young.” I didn’t always see it then, and I don’t always see it now, but He was leading gently, and He does.
Babies do sleep eventually, and they do find their smiles, and they do move from stage to stage and whatever you were dealing with last month is forgotten in the face of what you’re dealing with this month, and through it all, He is gently leading. What a promise.
