Prime Times: Bed Time

By Leah Dummel

My mom tells stories about how when my brother and I were little and she was working full time, along with my dad, trying to raise a family, that she would fall asleep during bedtime books. She would get my brother and I all scrubbed up and teeth brushed and fresh pajamas on and nestled into bed and begin our bedtime stories. She says she would wake up in our beds with my brother and I pleading, “wake up mommy, and please finish the story”!

Parents, RAISE YOUR HAND if you’ve been there!!!!! I know I have! Bedtime can be so absolutely draining. You’ve successfully spent a day working (outside or inside the home), fed your family, kept them all alive, done all the homework and nighttime chores, fed them, bathed them, and tucked them sweetly into their beds.  Mission accomplished – right?

I think sometimes as parents we just want it to end there. If we are all honest sometimes we are a little too eager for the bedtime routine to be over because it means we are FREE! I can remember being very pregnant with our second child and trying to navigate our oldest son’s bedtime. He was around 2 years old and needed all the things…every night.

He wanted all the stories and all the kisses and all the songs and all the snuggles. It would sometimes take hours. I have very vivid memories of waking up to my husband trying to pick me up off of the floor beside the bed where I had fallen asleep while completing bedtime.

It can be a lot.

It can be easy to rush through and miss out on.

But if we are able to push through the exhaustion just a little bit longer, there is so much Jesus to be shared and experienced during bedtime!

Our bedtime routine with our boys is pretty simple and probably pretty generic. Baths, brushing teeth, fresh pajamas, bedtime book, prayers, songs, and snuggles. While all those things in themselves are wonderful, I have been finding that it’s in those in-between moments where the true beauty lies.

We talk about our days. We sneak in extra kisses. We giggle (a lot) at daddy and his antics. We talk about hard things, and how to work through them. The kids ask big questions. They ask to pray…over and over and over. Sometimes we giggle through their prayers because they are so silly (example: “dear God, happy thank you for my toys”) but sometimes we shed tears during their prayers because they are so genuine (example: “dear God, thank you for my family and my brother and for Jesus and I love them all so much”).

Something about the bedtime routine seems to open and soften children’s hearts. You are there with them, and they there with you, totally concentrated on one another without distraction.

Even older children tend to be more vulnerable with their parents at bedtime. A friend of mine says that even though her relationship with her high school aged son has changed with him growing up, that he still asks her to come tuck him in at night. I read somewhere that when you are trying to create a peaceful home, something to remember is “let them remember joy and let them anticipate joy”. This reminds us that when our children are falling gently into the slumbers of sleep that they go with thoughts of joy and love and safety that surrounds them in their home.

You know, my husband and I joke about how I am a very “deep feeler”. He says that I carry around the “weight of empathy”. Sometimes this is a gift and sometimes it’s a curse. Something I feel very deeply and very strongly about it tangibly loving our children like Jesus loves us; and that in doing so when they’re young, will make a huge impact on the way they view God and His love for them when they are older.

So when I think about these “Prime Times” we have been talking about I keep coming back to 2nd Corinthians 4:18 … “for the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

So while the bedtime tantrums and the asking for another drink of water 100 times and the silly little prayers and the “5 more minutes of snuggles please” oftentimes feel daunting and we just want to be finished parenting for the day and collapse in sweet freedom into our couch, these moments will soon be gone. They will be over before we can even imagine. Just one blink and they will begin to need us less and less.

But he way we react to these moments, the way we don’t rush them through snuggles and prayers, the eye contact we make when they are breaking down their day for us, the authentic answers we give to their hard bedtime questions about life (because they hardest questions always come out right before bed don’t they?), the patience we practice and the grace we give them…the things we can’t see or notice or even realize we are doing, THOSE are the things that will last forever in the hearts of our children. And those are the things we lose sleep over and pray continuously will lead them straight toward the heart of Jesus as they grow up.