I don’t have any children of my own, but I notice that God seems to like to impart lessons to me by way of children.

Traveling around town with my friend and blogging partner Destinee in her vehicle with her four children last fall, her youngest, Nehemiah was behind my seat. When we reached a stop light, his little feet would pummel the back of my seat as he urged, “Go, Mommy! Go!”

Destinee would patiently explain that we were at a stop light and couldn’t “go.”

“Go, Mommy! Go!” Nehemiah persisted at each stop light and stop sign punctuating his words with kicks to the back of my seat.

“I can’t go, Nehemiah,” Destinee attempted to explain another time, “I’ll go to jail if I don’t stop at the light.”

“You no go to jail, Mommy, it okay, you go!” Nehemiah insisted in broken toddler speak.

We chuckled at his inability to grasp the purpose of our traffic laws. I thought about it at one of the stop signs as he urged us to go. I thought about how we don’t always get to be first. I thought about how even in traffic we need to take turns and give others an opportunity to “go” even when we’re in a hurry and it doesn’t necessarily suit us.

And I realized toddler “Nemo” simply wasn’t ready to grasp those concepts. He’s a bright sweet two-year-old, but he isn’t yet able to comprehend the complexities of American traffic laws.

Shortly after this, I was reading Joyce Meyers’ book on Healing the Soul of a Woman when I came to this section:

“I think it is safe to say that we all begin our journey with God full of self-will, and trading that for God’s will takes a lot of time and is often painful to us. Spiritual babies are no different than human babies. Both want their own way and will behave badly when they don’t get it. Just as we train our children, God trains us.”

Suddenly, my whole perspective of Nehemiah’s childish demands flipped and I saw myself as the toddler pounding on Daddy God’s chest.

“Go, Daddy! Go!”

“No, Daughter,” he says gently, “It’s not time.”

“It time, Daddy – Go!”

So many scenarios in my life where God has had me on pause, in the waiting room – waiting, waiting, waiting spun into the analogy.

And in this moment I see my childish demands full of self-will and Father God chuckling lovingly at me, realizing that I am unable to grasp the complexities of his purposes and timing.

This is trust training. Learning to say, I trust you God in this place that you don’t respond to my repeated demands for change. I don’t necessarily like it. But I trust you.

You are the creator of the heavens and earth. You have been a father for longer than I have been a daughter.

I trust that your plans for me are good. I trust that you won’t withhold any good thing from me. I trust you. We go when you say so, Papa.

**Originally published on Girly Christian blog as a guest blog by me.