2019: The Year of Big Girl Panties
/I am working on potty training Maya right now. Do I sound exhausted? Because...it’s pretty exhausting.
“Potty train before they turn two,” people said. “It will be so much easier than later,” they said. Well, guess what? They were right! Maya was pretty much ready for big girl panties at 22 months, right before Everly was born. She regressed with the birth of her new baby sister, and I threw in the towel thinking it would be way too hard to potty train a toddler by day and stay up feeding a newborn by night. Now here we are, almost a year later, and she is still in her pull ups. So we started big girl panties this week.
She knows how to use the potty. She knows when to use the potty. She is simply too strong-willed to use the potty. So far, on day four, she has gone on the potty for me exactly zero times. However, when daddy or grandparents are around, she has had no accidents. She potties on the potty for them like a champ. All day long she and I square off, me waiting expectantly with the potty, and her her digging in her heels and sneaking accidents all over the house (including one accident on her toddler Bible, which I’m pretty sure falls under the commandment about not taking the Lord’s name in vain, just sayin).
So what gives? Why is she so stubborn when it comes to me and more than willing to potty like a big girl for everyone else? Also, how is it that year ago she was more ready to ditch her diapers than she is now, even though she is older? Does she enjoy having a diaper full of filth on her when she could just flush it away and stay clean and dry?
I think I have it figured out. When Maya was little, she had no inhibitions about wearing her panties. She didn’t realize that ditching her diapers meant giving up the security to have an accident without consequences. But now that she is older, she knows too much. She knows that wearing big girl panties means having to find the potty when she needs to go. It means a consequence of wet pants for the world to see when she has an accident. The stakes are higher, and she prefers to have the safety of having a backup for her failures, even at the expense of having a wet diaper on.
Guess what? This post is not about potty training. It’s about maturity.
And this post is not about Maya. It’s about us.
As I observe Christians (myself included) I can see the same patterns of immaturity that Maya is displaying in her potty training. New Christians have this amazing energy and no inhibitions when it comes to sharing their faith with others. They are quick to talk about how God is working in their lives and share scripture with others, even though their knowledge of the Bible is just beginning. They seem to have no problem trusting God to take care of them and throw their back-up plans out the window to follow Him wholeheartedly into even the most daring of callings.
Then there are Christians like me, who have been walking with Christ for decades. We know the Bible backwards and forwards. We have researched the answers necessary for a theological debate. We have walked the everyday journey with Christ through so many seasons, all of the ups and downs, and He has been faithful. However, underneath our clothes, where no one can see, we have reverted back to wearing pull ups. We still want to have some security to fall back on because we know too much.
We know that sometimes God’s will is not our will, and we will have to say “your will be done”.
We know that we will have to leave things behind when following Christ, things that we never thought we would be asked to give up.
We know that taking up our cross to follow Christ daily means building His kingdom at the expense of building our own.
We know that the only guarantee we have in life is that Christ will be with us in the sorrow and hardship, not that it won’t come.
We know that people will judge the God we serve based on our behavior, even though we are flawed individuals.
Knowing all of this makes us wonder if we can really walk the Christian life in our big girl panties. We want to keep the pull ups on, just in case. We want a guarantee that our accidents will be covered. We aren’t sure that we can take the leap of following Christ daily through year after year without holding on to any of the control. But as a result, we are carrying around a diaper full of filth.
This filth can be a lot of different things:
Unaddressed sin in our lives
Unwillingness to follow Christ into something new and unknown
A lack of faith in Christ’s leading
A selfishness of keeping our faith to ourselves
An idol in our lives that we are unwilling to relinquish
An unbiblical and unhealthy thought pattern or belief
And in the same way that Maya will make strides with everyone but me, we save all of these insecurities and fears and use them as a barrier between us and the one that knows us and loves us the most- our heavenly father. He is the one that we should be able to be the most vulnerable with, but sometimes the knowledge that He knows us completely is a little overwhelming. We tend to have all of our accidents in His presence, because there is no hiding the truth anyway. But that’s ok. I still love Maya no matter how many accidents she has, and God loves us so much more.
So it’s 2019, and it’s time for some big girl panties. It’s time to get vulnerable about our failures and our faith. It’s time to follow Christ wherever He may lead and ditch the back-up plan. It’s time to leave behind the filth of sin and idols in our lives. It’s time to take up our cross without holding on to the things we are called to leave behind. It’s time to go all in, and give up the diapers, cold turkey.
And why should we take this leap of faith? Because we are placing that faith in God! The creator of the Universe! The lover of our souls! If we can’t leave behind everything in faith to follow him, then we are seriously missing out on the plans that he has to use us for his kingdom. There is an adventure ahead for those who accept the calling, but we must leave the diapers at home.
I don’t know what this year will bring, but I have a feeling it will involve some spiritual potty training for me (and hopefully some actual potty training for Maya).
