Lord, Help Me Lean on You.

Jesse is twenty months old, and he has a habit on the changing table. I lay him down, and before his back is anywhere near the surface, he leans.

He tips himself backward, trusting that my hand will be there to cradle his head and guide him down the last few inches.

And it always is. He has done this hundreds of times. He leans, my hand catches, he lands soft. He has never once checked to see whether I was ready. He just falls back into the certainty that I have him.

But, the other day, I wasn't ready. I was reaching for a clean nappy (what we call a nappy), half turned away, and he leaned back the way he always does, expecting the soft landing that had never once failed him.

My hand wasn't there. He caught the edge of the table with the back of his head, and the look on his face undid me. It wasn't only the pain. It was the surprise. He had trusted the catch, and this time the catch wasn't there.

I held him while he cried, and I kept seeing that look. He wasn't wrong to trust me. He was right to. The problem wasn't his trust. It was that I am a limited person with a limited attention span, and for one second I was somewhere else.

I love that boy with everything in me, and I still missed.

That is what even the best human love is like. It is real, and on its own it is not enough.

The people who would do anything for you are still people. They get tired. They look away. They mean to catch you, and sometimes their hand isn't there.

If your picture of God has been shaped by the ones who let you down, you might lean toward Him already braced for the bump, half expecting Him to be reaching for something else in the moment you need Him most.

But God is not a limited person with a wandering attention. His hand does not drift. He is never turned away, never caught off guard, never a second too late.

This is the One you get to lean on.

Not a feeling, not a hope you talk yourself into, but a Father whose hand has never, not once, missed.

So you can put your full weight on Him. You can lean the way a child leans, without checking, without bracing, certain that He already has you.

So lean. And when your own strength gives out, lean harder, not less.

And on the days you cannot find the trust to do it, let that be the prayer itself:

Lord, help me lean on You. He has you. He has always had you. You can close your eyes and let go.