Baby Teeth

We need them, we enjoy having them, we work hard to maintain them, losing them gives way to the permanent, the struggle leads to that which will remain.

This Babcock household has been going through a season of teething, pretty much since Isaiah was 3 months old, (now 8 months old). This little charmer of a boy has been liberally producing a pool size amount of saliva way before these little "teethlings" decide to pierce out swollen gums.

The process is quite grueling; pain with no explanation, no one to tell you how long you will have to endure. Your only mission is to submit without knowing the cure. How does one survive?

This got me thinking about my own struggles, my “Jacob wrestlings"; feeling the pain not knowing the solution wondering where it came from and why I must go through. Then I consider… “Does God feel the same way I do as I watch my son struggle with the unknown?”

I look at my baby boy and watch him hurt and my heart aches. I want to let him know that it’s all so, so important, to let him know that the pain has a purpose. The Father didn’t provide for this momentary relief by explanation, the struggle I trust is important, important for both of us. I am left to guide him through the pain and comfort him in the journey and he is left to stay the course, endure the hardship and abide in the arms of those he trusts.

I believe the Father’s heart aches when He sees us in pain but He is unwilling to sacrifice the momentary affliction for the eternal gift.

Baby boy, this pain will produce the ability to sustain you, to keep you nourished, to build you up so you can tear down inhibitions, this pain will produce, it will produce.

I looked up the definition of “teething” online at “dictionary.com” and it stated… “eruption of deciduous teeth, especially the phenomena associated with their eruption.”  Wait a minute, this pain produces the piercing through of teeth that will disappear!? Eruptions of pain and then loss and death!? Why the process? These deciduous teeth are there for a season to help sustain us until our mouths and jaws grow big enough to accommodate adult teeth. I would like to think that these deciduous teeth prepare the way for the permanent as the process of acquiring the adult teeth is far less painful then the initial eruption of baby teeth.

He uses the deciduous to bring about the permanent. Sometimes the Lord allows us to go through a struggle, a struggle that causes pain, pain that produces character, character that enables us to surrender to Him, surrender that leads to relationship with the one true God, ETERNAL Love abides in this, all other things will pass.