Parents Have Eyes but a Child Knows

I can't remember how many years of my childhood I believed the saying that "Mothers have eyes in the back of their heads." Since the percentage of getting caught when I did something wrong was nearly perfect, I didn't need to see them to believe it. I may have fallen for that much longer than my belief in Santa Claus.

Yet, never once was I told...warned...that "children are born with parent sensors." These hidden, internal alarm systems that know exactly when to go off and cause a child to act, react or refuse to act at the worst possible moments. Let me give you proof.

As an infant, this internal alarm will wake the baby up and cause them to cry EXACTLY at the moment your sleep-deprived brain shuts off and you begin to dream. Though they can't utter a word, just try and lift a video recorder and watch the smile disappear and adorable behavior a mere memory. Just when you're heading out the door to go to church, breathless while trying to make it on time (for once), their little sensors let them know they have a new outfit on that has yet to be "baptized" with their breakfast. See? Psalm 139 says God knows our "down sittings and uprisings." So do they.

As a child grows, this "parental sensor" becomes even more astounding in its inopportune precision. Try and tiptoe to the bathroom for a 2 minute pit stop while your child is deeply enthralled in a video. That sensor will alert your Johnny (no pun intended) so that the moment you take your seat, there will either be a knock on the door or a little munchkin in front of you saying, "whatcha' doin' Mama?"

Don't ever try putting hair coloring on without another adult in the home. Their sensors must react to the chemicals because some kind of problem invariably will ensue to make you miss your rinse time. I narrowly escaped looking like the poster girl for a bad radiation experiment.

Yes...the following parental activities are guaranteed to trigger those internal alarms and cause some kind of cataclysmic event:

•  Talking on the phone

• Talking to your spouse

• Talking to anyone other than them

• Starting dinner

• Standing in a checkout line

• Trying to read...anything

• Getting out of the house for an appointment

• Stepping into the shower or tub

• Needing to concentrate

• Dressing them in a new article of clothing or something WHITE

• Saying things like "Be careful" or "Don't touch that." 

The list is actually infinite. I'm not bitter. I just felt the need to notify others who were never warned about these supernatural gifts given to....parents? It must be one of the top ten instruments in God's toolbox to bring out the fullness of James 1:4 "But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."

Patience. 

18 years will seem like 18 seconds in hindsight. I'll regret the lump on my forehead from hitting it into the wall but I'll never regret all of the gifts tucked inside this child to teach me how to be more like Jesus.

Psalm 127:3a "Behold, children are a gift of the LORD..."