My daughter was always an angelic sleeper.  She started sleeping through the night when she was nine weeks old..and to a large extent we have never looked back.  If we keep her out late she makes up for it by sleeping in the next day.  She doesn't fight us on bedtime or naps.  My son has not always been that easy.  He didn't start sleeping through the night until he was six months old, and that required some tough love.  he is getting MUCH better about not fighting us on sleep, he is pretty good about sleeping in to make up for lost sleep...etc.  I really don't have much to complain about. 

 However, sometimes he WON'T sleep he just won't do it.  I will know that he is tired,  it's his nap time.  Conditions are prime for a great nap..and he won't.  He will just cry.  Sometimes he will never fall asleep, sometimes he will fall asleep and fifteen to twenty minutes in he will wake up and not go back to sleep.  Here is the part that is interesting to me.  If held he will sleep.   I will walk into his room, pick him up, and he will put his head on my chest and fall asleep. WHY?  If his teeth were hurting they don't hurt less because I am holding him do they?  If something scared him why is it less scary with me in the room? What is it about being held that suddenly makes the world ok?  All of a sudden he is relaxed and content and almost instantly asleep.   I LOVE THAT!  I love that I am that person.  It draws such a parallel to me with our relationship with God.  How often would we do so much better if we just allowed HIM to hold us?  It doesn't make our problems or our pain go away.  It doesn't make the big scary world any less big or scary.  BUT it does mean that we don't have to deal with the big and scary world.  It does mean that we can know that someone else is going to deal with what comes our way FOR US.  How amazing is it that God is THAT parent to us?   How amazing that He is our 'everlasting arms' (Deut. 33:27).   That He hides us "under His wings" (Psalm 91:4).  And how incredible is it that He then gives us the chance to BE a parent?  To SEE every day  what our relationship with Him SHOULD look like and COULD look like?