I often tell my daughter to do what she can. Because my daughter was a premature baby she spent a lot of time in the hospital where others did everything for her all the time, but I always knew that the key to her long term success was her learning to do what she could do for herself when she was able to do it. For example, the last month that she was in the NICU (neo-natal intensive care unit), she was there because she refused to eat--she wouldn't suckle. The doctors told us she'd have to be released with a feeding tube because they couldn't keep feeding her through the tube going down her nose and they had to send her home. My husband and I prayed and sought God and the next day we met with the doctors again. We told them that our daughter was not going home with a feeding tube nor would she continue to be fed through her nose. Instead we insisted that they simply remove all forced feeding so that she would get hungry and want to eat on her own. She needed to learn to do what she could do.
The doctors were horrified by our suggestion and said that such a thing had never been done in the history of University Hospital and that we were taking a risk of losing our child to starvation. They tried to scare us, but God had already assured us of what to do. The head of the NICU came to us and told us, She's your child and you have to do what you believe is best. We told him that we had prayed and this is what we knew was best. The feeding tube was removed on that Monday evening. By Wednesday we had our daughter at home and she was drinking from a bottle on her own! She had her struggles and it was very messy, but we learned that she could do it.
As Christians it is so important that we lean on God and trust in Him with all of our hearts. What we think we know from our experiences really doesn't apply with God because He is known for creating something out of nothing and for bringing order to chaos. God is the master of impossible. He works best in an underdog situation. He likes it when everyone has counted you out--that's exactly when He does His very best work.
Our position in all of this is to do what we can do, which is all things through Christ who strengthens us and then to let God do what only He can do. Last story . . . this morning I came down the stairs to see my daughter struggling to get her coat off the coat rack. Her hat and gloves were on the bench fully within her reach, but she hadn't touched those at all. I chided her because she had spent all of her time trying to do something that she couldn't do--that wasn't her job to do, and totally ignoring what she could do and what was her job to do. Today let's make it up in our minds to do what God has called us to do and to allow God to do what only He can do in our lives.
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