The Advantages of Discomfort

My brand new daughter, Lucy, taught me a lesson very early this morning.  Ahh, those 4 a.m. lessons.  If you’ve ever nursed a baby, you know that the middle of the night feedings are tough.  As bonding and  as healthy as it is, you are bleary eyed at best.

If Lucy gets her sleepy way, she’ll nurse for about five minutes, then fall back asleep.  Only to wake up less than an hour later to nurse again.  Oy.  If I get my sleepy way, she’ll nurse for forty minutes, enabling her to fall back asleep for a good 3-4 blissful hours.

Here’s the trick.  I let the baby nurse for as long as she’s willing.  Then, when she drifts back to sleep a few minutes later, I get up to change her diaper.  This exposes the little, sleepy warm bundle to some cold air, cold wipes, much jostling, and likely an out-of-tune, made-up song.  (My latest was elegantly entitled “Poop Explosion”.)  Mildly traumatized and a bit chilly, she’s ready to nurse again for the long haul.  Bring on the comfort, she says, wordlessly.  The diaper change works like a charm to get her to accept what she needs – timely nutrition and hugs.

So I got to thinking.  Isn’t that what God does with us?  He lets us go our own way, until we become complacent or apathetic.  Until we fall asleep in life, until we are just going through the motions.  Then He allows something really jarring in our lives, and we wake right up.  Roused out of our comfort zone, we run to God for comfort and help.  This is right where He wants us, right?

In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis calls pain “God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  What better way to get our attention than pain?  The saving grace is that there is always comfort to be found, and there is always a specific, loving purpose to the discomfort.  If I, as such an imperfect, out-of-tune mother, have loving purposes for Lucy, how much more so does God have them for you and me.  Even when our lives appear to resemble a poop explosion.

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