{"id":6845,"date":"2016-02-22T10:16:41","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T18:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/?p=6845"},"modified":"2024-10-27T06:29:23","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T12:29:23","slug":"a-presence-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/a-presence-test","title":{"rendered":"A Presence Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

I posted last week about my focus word for the year, presence<\/a>. How I tend to ‘do’ a lot with my children and how they just want me to ‘be’ there. I think I do the same thing with God. My prayer is to be present and spend time in His presence.<\/p>\n

After praying and focusing on my focus word for a couple weeks, my baby got sick. The sickest he’s been and I think maybe more sick than the others have ever been (at least a longer duration). All he wanted was to be held and be held and be held. And not the kind of holding where I could do something at the same time. But I had so many things to ‘do’, I had two other kids and school and a house to run. But my baby needed me, my presence. And since there wasn’t really anything else I could do, I held him.
\nFor. Two. Days.
\nTwo days in which I didn’t get anything done, in which we didn’t go grocery shopping, and we missed a party and a playdate, in which we ate Subway and frozen pizza for dinners. Two days that I was present for my fussy, sick baby and while I held him, I spent some time with God too. And even though I wouldn’t have picked to spend my days that way, I’d like to think I passed my first presence test.
\nAside: The older kids thought the first day was a great vacation and then Nate took them out the second day (which also happened to be Hannah’s birthday). It is nice to have a wonderful partner to do life with!<\/p>\n

I know Joel isn’t going to remember these two days. I know none of them will think back and remember all those times mom did chores or cleaned up after them. They hopefully won’t remember the times I snapped at them. I’ve heard that they are going to look back and remember the times we spent together. I don’t want to be a helicopter parent. But I do want to be available. I hope I’m teaching them independence and how to work out their problems. Then, I want to be there when they can’t do it on their own, or when they face something new that I can help them with. I want them to know that whatever I am ‘doing’ at the time isn’t near as important as they are to me. I pray that when they look back they will remember that I was always there for them when they needed me, present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted last week about my focus word for the year, presence. How I tend to ‘do’ a lot with my children and how they just want me to ‘be’ there. I think I do the same thing with God. My prayer is to be present and spend time in His presence. After praying and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[245,9,7],"tags":[1115,1114,20,1113,1112,1098,478,1091],"class_list":["post-6845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-becca-2","category-faith","category-kids","tag-be","tag-do","tag-god","tag-held","tag-hold","tag-presence","tag-present","tag-sick","wpcat-245-id","wpcat-9-id","wpcat-7-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p504YJ-1Mp","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6836,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/presence","url_meta":{"origin":6845,"position":0},"title":"Presence","author":"Becca","date":"February 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Photo taken in Wyoming on a trip to Yellowstone (I don't know why I equate God with beautiful skies, maybe because they are so big!) 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He has decided to try to catch up on a year's worth of illness in one week. He has had Hand, Foot, and Mouth since Sunday night (I don't recommend getting this!) and last night got really croupy and having hard time breathing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Joel"","block_context":{"text":"Joel","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/kids\/joel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8391,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2011\/02\/poor-baby","url_meta":{"origin":6845,"position":4},"title":"Poor Baby","author":"Becca","date":"February 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Ben is either sick or growing. . .","rel":"","context":"In "Becca"","block_context":{"text":"Becca","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/becca-2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1042,"url":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/2011\/02\/whats-my-name","url_meta":{"origin":6845,"position":5},"title":"What’s my name?","author":"Nate","date":"February 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I received a word from God today during the praise and worship.\u00a0 I thought about sharing it with the church but decided not to because I remember hearing from others about the Sunday we missed on New Years.\u00a0 Basically the word I received was nearly the same message preached on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nate"","block_context":{"text":"Nate","link":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/cat\/nate-2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/testimony.jpg?fit=512%2C341&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themoehrings.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/moehring-hannah-joel-benjamin.jpg?fit=1099%2C1500&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6845"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29301,"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845\/revisions\/29301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themoehrings.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}