I Know What You're Up To!

“I know what you guys are up to”, our four year old, Benaiah, sternly declared as he abruptly opened his door and stumbled out into the living room a good twenty minutes after we had tucked him in.  I couldn’t help but be amused even though it was well past his bedtime. “You guys want to stay up all night and watch tv without us so you’re just making us go to sleep. ” This couldn’t be further from the truth because really all I wanted to do was go to sleep, and we couldn’t until they did. Like any kids, ours don’t generally enjoy bedtime. However, Benaiah is usually the first one to give in and fall asleep so I was surprised to see him that night. For whatever reason, he had been laying in bed stewing about the unjustness of bedtime and the nerve of his parents to stay up late without him. By the time he decided to confront us about it, he had worked himself up into a pretty decent huff and was ready to unleash. He was convinced that we just didn’t want to spend time with him. It didn’t matter that the truth was that little bodies need their rest and it was already past his bedtime. Not only that, but truth be told, I miss my kids about five minutes after they fall asleep and, like some kind of crazy person, want to go in and wake them up to hang out with me. No, none of that mattered. What mattered was his perception of bedtime. The scenario he’d worked up while lying in bed with his mind spinning.

I get it. I mean really, he probably got that from me. I mastered the art of the worst case scenario a long time ago. It took some work, but I got there. And it’s a trait that took even longer to become a “lost art”. I often found myself spinning about arguments with people I’d never actually had, and likely never would. It could be easy for me to imagine what a person might have meant by an offhanded comment. It didn’t take much to come up with some scorching reason that someone didn’t text back. Without really realizing what was happening, I would spend my time thinking about the comment, what I should have said, what I would say next time. I found myself upset with someone for something to which they were oblivious. I would get worked up while they would go about their day. Instead of believing their intentions were good, I’d assume they were malicious.

While these scenarios I imagined might have made a good Lifetime movie, they did very little for me in reality. It’s easy to get worked up thinking about “what if’s” that will never happen, “how dare they’s” that have never been spoken. They say perception is everything. In this case, perception was nothing. My perception was a lie. It was a simple distraction that kept me from focusing on the things God wanted me to pursue.

Benaiah thought that he “knew what we were up to”, but in reality he was way off. If he’d been paying attention when we tucked him in and told him how much we loved him and how we would have another fun day when he woke up. If he had decided to believe the best, he could have peacefully fallen asleep secure in the truth that he is dearly loved by his mommy and daddy who love to spend time with him.

Think about what is true. Think about what is noble. What is right, pure, lovely and admirable. {Philippians 4:8}