For me, as a mom of four busy boys who come up with ideas like riding their skateboard down the slide, and moving their playground ladder from tree to tree, it is extremely difficult to say "In God We Trust" and actually mean it. What if He isn't watching when they're jumping their bikes over a rickety make-shift ramp in the driveway, or when they are swimming at a friend's house, or wrestling too close to the brick hearth on the fireplace? Does He really understand how important it is that they have friends with the same lunch hour in middle school, and that they are not bullied on the playground? Does He realize that I am convinced that they are all too young and sweet and innocent to endure pain and sickness of any kind?
When I am faced with a particularly tough situation there is a 'mommy experience' that I often think about. When our babies are a few months old we begin the series of vaccinations that they receive several times throughout childhood. I take a smiling baby to a smiling nurse. I hold him on my lap and he's still happy and trusting. Then the nice nurse takes what to him looks like a long, sharp thing and jabs it into his pudgy leg. He cries, I hold him, and I let the nurse jab him three more times. I think about how this situation appears to a baby. Mommy, who he trusts more than anyone and who loves him more than anyone, allows him to be hurt again and again. He has no understanding of why this is happening. He doesn't know that his parents are trying to protect him by allowing this horrible thing to happen.
Just as I understand more than my 3 month old child, God understands so much more than me. I can picture myself as the trusting child who is hurt without understanding why. I can picture God as the parent who tries to comfort me during the hurt but allows the hurt to happen for my own good. I can try my best to trust again as quickly as my sons, who were usually smiling at me again by the time we reached the mini-van.
I can hope to do better at believing that God knows what He is doing not only when my fears are centered on myself, but when they are centered on my children. I'm sure I will always be praying that a nosebleed is just a nosebleed, and a bad mood just a phase ,but when things don't go the way I wish they would, I can know that God is holding my boys on his lap, and I can say "In God We Trust."
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