** Update**
It is 12:15 am. Joshua cried less than 45 minutes! That is an hour and 15 minutes shorter than last night... Have I mentioned how I HATE letting my baby cry? Ugh!
And so, night 2 of crying it out begins!!!
All prayers appreciated as it is hard to not give in!!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Crying out...
So you probably read the title of this post and thought to yourself.."This is got to be about Casey crying out to God about something" right? Well I will be doing alot of crying out to God, but I have decided to take the dreaded step of...
Letting Joshua cry it out.
Let me give you a bit of history. Starting about 8 months Joshua got colds quite frequently, there for he wasn't sleeping that great thru the night. And when he wasn't dealing with a cold, he was cutting teeth. Needless to say there was a WHOLE lot of us going in there and comforting him, or bringing him to bed with us until he fell asleep, or me and John taking turns laying on the couch with him until he would fall asleep. But here it is, Joshua is now 14 months old and we are still having the night wakes. He will just scream and scream. Me and John evaluate the situation with questions like "Is it to cold in his room? Is it to hot in his room? Is he teething? No maybe he isn't feeling that great" And after about 5 minutes of crying, we go in there, pick him up, and as SOON as you walk out of the room with him he is silent. So that is a sure sign that nothing is wrong with him; we just have trained him. I hate it when you know that you have done something to cause your child to have a hard time. We have conditioned Joshua into thinking that if he wakes up during the night and puts up enough fight, that we will go in there and he can sleep with us, or we will cuddle with him as long as needed. This for me and John has left us tired and drained all day, every day. It's really not about our lack of sleep that I am doing this, but for the well being of my son! He has a big ole nice bed that is just his, and he is old enough.
Do you know how hard it is for me to let him cry, scream, and whimper? It is killing me right now as I type this post. Here it is, 2:34am, and I am on blogger writing a post. Joshua will sleep off and on for about a minute and then start crying again. I have decided that since it is my Spring Break, I will take the responsibility of sitting up in the Living room with the monitor on (just to make sure he doesn't throw up or kill himself in there) until he falls asleep. I want John to be able to function for work! I have read all over the internet that the reason he cries so much now is because of his age, and if I am persistant, and am strong willed in doing this that this won't last longer than a week! So I am venturing out on the crying out method! It's hard! WAY HARD.
But I am reminded that sometimes God has to let us cry it out too. He cannot always give us EVERYTHING we want. He has to sit back and say "no not yet", or just "no", and he has to watch us cry it out. I bet that it is hard for him to listen to us cry it out, but in the long run, he knows whats best for us. He knows that it will make us stronger if he lets us cry it out.
So... I am trying to be a great mother, and teach my child a small amount of independence. Can you pray for me over the next couple of nights??? Pray for my strength and indurance as I venture out on "Sleep Boot Camp"?? Pray that God would come to me in this time and comfort me and let me know that I am doing what is best for Joshua, and that it will work! Joshua will begin to sleep thru the night and be able to soothe himself back to sleep!
I will update!
Letting Joshua cry it out.
Let me give you a bit of history. Starting about 8 months Joshua got colds quite frequently, there for he wasn't sleeping that great thru the night. And when he wasn't dealing with a cold, he was cutting teeth. Needless to say there was a WHOLE lot of us going in there and comforting him, or bringing him to bed with us until he fell asleep, or me and John taking turns laying on the couch with him until he would fall asleep. But here it is, Joshua is now 14 months old and we are still having the night wakes. He will just scream and scream. Me and John evaluate the situation with questions like "Is it to cold in his room? Is it to hot in his room? Is he teething? No maybe he isn't feeling that great" And after about 5 minutes of crying, we go in there, pick him up, and as SOON as you walk out of the room with him he is silent. So that is a sure sign that nothing is wrong with him; we just have trained him. I hate it when you know that you have done something to cause your child to have a hard time. We have conditioned Joshua into thinking that if he wakes up during the night and puts up enough fight, that we will go in there and he can sleep with us, or we will cuddle with him as long as needed. This for me and John has left us tired and drained all day, every day. It's really not about our lack of sleep that I am doing this, but for the well being of my son! He has a big ole nice bed that is just his, and he is old enough.
Do you know how hard it is for me to let him cry, scream, and whimper? It is killing me right now as I type this post. Here it is, 2:34am, and I am on blogger writing a post. Joshua will sleep off and on for about a minute and then start crying again. I have decided that since it is my Spring Break, I will take the responsibility of sitting up in the Living room with the monitor on (just to make sure he doesn't throw up or kill himself in there) until he falls asleep. I want John to be able to function for work! I have read all over the internet that the reason he cries so much now is because of his age, and if I am persistant, and am strong willed in doing this that this won't last longer than a week! So I am venturing out on the crying out method! It's hard! WAY HARD.
But I am reminded that sometimes God has to let us cry it out too. He cannot always give us EVERYTHING we want. He has to sit back and say "no not yet", or just "no", and he has to watch us cry it out. I bet that it is hard for him to listen to us cry it out, but in the long run, he knows whats best for us. He knows that it will make us stronger if he lets us cry it out.
So... I am trying to be a great mother, and teach my child a small amount of independence. Can you pray for me over the next couple of nights??? Pray for my strength and indurance as I venture out on "Sleep Boot Camp"?? Pray that God would come to me in this time and comfort me and let me know that I am doing what is best for Joshua, and that it will work! Joshua will begin to sleep thru the night and be able to soothe himself back to sleep!
I will update!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Woah, hold on God!
So tonight, as I was sitting there in silence reading Psalm, the Lord presented me with a passage that I probably have read a dozen times, but tonight it took on a completely different meaning. Don't you hate...okay not hate, but love when God reveals something about you, something that your inner self is crying out but you just can't seem to find the words. So what does God do? Point you to a scripture or passage that had someone else feeling the exact same way you do?
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So I present you with Psalm 3 (mine is in New Living Translation)
"O Lord, I have so many enemies:
so many are against me.
So many are saying, "God will never rescue him"
But you, O Lord are a shield around me;
you are my glory, the one who holds my head high.
I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me from his Holy Mountain.
I lay down and slept,
yet I woke up in safety,
for the Lord was watching over me.
I am not afraid of ten thousand enemies who
surround me on every side.
Arise, O Lord! Rescue me, my God!
Slap all my enemies in the face!
Shatter the teeth of the wicked!
Victory comes from you, O Lord.
May you bless your people.
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So yeah, this passage is my heart right now. I shared with the two ladies in my Life transformation group this Saturday morning that my heart is hurting. It's hurting because of so many issues going on in our family. On my side, and on John's side. It hurts! And honestly, I feel as if I am standing up and their are enemies all around me. This verse was simply the cry of my heart because no matter how I feel right now, God is watching over me and he will not let my enemies get to me. I think sometimes I forget that God does hear me! He is answering my prayers. He will take care of my enemies, and he wants me to just trust in him and have a heart for serving and seeking him in this situation. I really believe that the Lord does have reconciliation in plan, but my plan may be wrong. For our sake as a family I hope reconciliation is the plan because there is nothing more dear to my heart than family.
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Also, this cries volumes on my struggle with Anxiety. Many of you know I have been REALLY struggling with this for almost 6 years! Can I tell you from experience how much it stinks to be in bondage to something like this for so long!?!? God truly is the one who can rescue me from this. I consider my anxiety an enemy.. most certainly Satan. I always let it feed at me and eat me away until the point I think I have some life altering disease. Its always this way.. I remember a quote a bible professor at LCU told me
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"Two natures beat within my breast, one is foul and one is blessed.
One I love, and one I hate. The one I feed will dominate"
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Its so very true! The more and more I continue to let the chains on my mind and soul continue to get tighter and heavier, the more and more I feed it, and the more and more I become a SLAVE to it! So praise be to God, because I know, I am on my way to experiencing true freedom from anxiety!!
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Praise: This Saturday I was able to rekindle a relationship with a cousin of mine and it was the most amazing thing to feel the warmth of the Lord covering me as I spoke to her in confidence. Sometimes it just SUCKS to say your sorry when you feel you really aren't. But the Lord is silly in that he always shows me something about myself that needs to change critically when I pray for the hearts of those I love to change. That funny God! He wants us to be in his image, and that means that there are things in our lives, as sinful humans, that need to be broken off of us. We need to get rid of them, and sometimes that takes noticing it in someone we love for us to begin to pray for them, and in reality, it's us that needs to change!
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Also in Psalm 4:4, the Lord commands us to not let our anger get the best of us! He tells us to sleep on our thoughts. I think this is so true! How often do you go to bed pissed off (can I say that on here??) and when you finally do go to sleep, you wake up in the morning with a new understanding about the situation or person. You can honestly see how your attitude needed rest to change. I think it's so important to realize that even David (the Man after Gods own heart) struggled with anger just like I do!
Run to him!!!
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