of alarm clocks and such

My kids have a favorite radio station and they always ask to listen when we are commuting back and forth from school. It isn't a Christian station - the organization Tim works with has an application in with the government and they are just waiting on final approval from the government... I think - and so sometimes we turn the volume down for a song or conversation (and then discuss why we needed to turn it down). For the most part, however, the station tends to be family-friendly, is great French practice and is often downright hilarious, especially when the radio hosts begin to share interesting tidbits they've run across in the news, on the internet, etc.

Such was the case yesterday afternoon on the way home from school.

Apparently, a study has been done about the most effective way to get kids out of bed in the morning. 

As a mom of more-than-a-couple-still-remaining-at-home and even with the heavy traffic through construction zones, I instantly tuned in to the conversation. For, as most mamas know, especially those who have teens, sometimes you literally have to grab that young'un by the leg and physically drag them out from under the covers for even a groaning/moaning response. This week, I became a 23 year veteran of this parenting gig, yet I don't have this one near figured out. So, I was all ears to learn what the researchers had discovered. 

One conclusion was that, especially for kids and teens, alarm clocks are simply not effective. Younger bodies sleep longer and usually much deeper than the old folks with whom they rub shoulders. It is documented that children and youth often (if not usually) sleep through alarm clocks, fire alarms, emergency sirens, tornadoes... Hence sometimes, one of our basement dwelling teens' alarms will wake me, all the way up on the 2nd floor, before it ever causes them to stir. 

Yes - I write truth - even if they later deny it.

I also know for a fact that every single one of my kids is delighted when I wake them up by quietly entering their room leaving the light off, sit on the side of the bed (or snuggle right down under the covers with them), stroke their hair, scratch their back, and whisper softly next to their ear. The researchers found that this method was not only more pleasant for the child, but that youth are awake, literally with in seconds, when awoken gently. Compare that to the minutes, on average, required to drag a child from sleep when an obnoxious, obtrusive and very loud noise began to sound. It's also important to include that the gentle, rapid awakening resulted in happier, more compliant little people in the morning as well.

Also interesting? A female's voice - a mother's voice - was the voice that was effective. Dad whispering just didn't have the same impact.

Interesting eh?

As I've been mulling this over, I was also struck by just how God often uses that same, gentle approach when waking us from spiritual sleep. 

Sometimes, it feels like I am slapped in the face with truth or a need to change. But more often, it is the gentle whispering of the Spirit when I feel wrapped in the love of godly, encouraging friends, a surprising comment from one of my kids hidden in the humor of our family life, a passage of Scripture that replays over and over in one of the songs we listen to almost every day, a simple word that repeatedly comes up in all of the above and other situations that reminds me to return to God's truth and His way.

This shouldn't surprise me. After all, the Word teaches that all the flashy, amazing and brazen have little effect if not also smothered with tenderness and love: 

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails..."

Love never fails. I don't think that means love is like a fairy godmother's magic wand... I never realized until just recently that I've always treated those words like that, thinking, "Just gotta love enough and things will somehow work out." Rather, I've now come to think it means that love just keeps on keeping on and keep on and keeping on. Regardless. Regardless of the result or lack of result.

And, I'm challenged once again, even though I always fall short, to love like that.

I can be okay with falling short because where I am weak, He is strong. I can also rest in the other verse that came to mind as I reflected on that alarm clock study: "Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me... my hope is in the Lord, forevermore." (Psalm 131)

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