Anyone who is married with children can tell you that the first cry escaping from your newborn's lips marks the eclipse of your past life. Whoever you were before that first birth is suddenly transformed by the helpless body resting on your chest. You magically become an adult to your parents. You are the center of attention at the grocery store. You have wisdom beyond your years in the eyes of your childless friends. But sadly, many of us make our exciting parental debut while becoming a stranger to our spouse. Whether you discover your views of child-rearing are more opposite than you had believed, dating becomes a distant teenage memory or you just never manage to be awake at the same time, distance between a husband and wife crouches behind the cradle like a hungry tiger, constantly ready to devour its prey.

How does this happen? Why is this foe so ominously encroaching? When I complain of fear for this lurking monster, my husband so often replies, "We are with each other all the time. We are doing all this together. Why wouldn't we be fine?" And yet as the days tasks accumulate and multiply and compound on top of each other and then your 3-year-old tries to help and spills an entire gallon of milk through the keys of your laptop on the kitchen table, you find that your time, energy and patience vanishes and the desire you once had for spousal interaction dissolves into a comfortable pair of pajamas and a piece of cake in bed.

But its not just the business and fatigue that battle against your once romantic existence. Another much more subtle and apparently innocent force fuels this separation. Oh, that sweet baby. Never in all my daydreams could I have possibly imagined how much I would love my precious children. I had not thought my heart emotionally capable of such feelings. I have never possessed something so valuable. Never wanted to protect something so much. Never wanted to sacrifice every last ounce of my being for anything like this. Every time I hold their beautiful faces in my hands, the world around them fades from view, and I am lost in their flawless eyes. This new kind of love I have encountered is so powerful and permeating, it has the occasion to consume my entire heart, leaving it listless to others by the end of the day.

This love a parent feels for their child becomes competition, at times, for the previously dominating love of a spouse. How could it possibly be wrong to love a child with all the power of your being? Are you supposed to reign in your feelings for your babies to allow your love for your mate to flourish?

On this specific struggle, God's Word illuminates hope. In the Garden of Eden, God designed a world in which He and the man he created could have flawless and uninhibited, sweet fellowship. In the midst of all that, the Lord saw that man needed to have an increased depth in his understanding of love to appreciate the kind that God had for him. Placing the woman in Adam's life changed it utterly and irrevocably. To be sure, Adam's relationship with God would never be the same. As man's journey in fellowship with God progressed throughout the generations, the Lord would finally see fit to send His Son to close the gap between Him and His beloved. The hope that His Son would bring stretches even to this struggle we face in marriage: Jesus taught, "By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." How could we be so profoundly knit to the person of God that the entire world would recognize our close connection by an action so seemingly separate from our interaction with Him?

We are God's children. He feels more strongly about us than we could possibly feel in the height of our personal parenting experiences. In our choice to truly love others and do right by them as His children, we step forward in renewed commitment to Him that shouts from the mountain tops, "I love my sweet Savior so intensely to do this for Him!"

I watched my husband fix a delicious and healthy meal for my children, walk them through their AWANA verse memory, and kink his head in the small remaining niche left in their pillows to comfort them with his presence into a drifting sleep. Drinking in his passion and dedication to our children warmed my heart with his love for me. Those are my little ones he wrapped in his arms to soothe their cries. As much as he does that for them, he does that for me too. Adjusting my perspective to enjoy my husband's love for our children as a contribution to the bond between us sent my heart aflutter for him.

As with Jesus' teaching on those who claimed to be His and fed the poor and healed the sick in His name but did not love him, we can minister to our children from selfish motives and hurt ourselves, them, God and our spouses. But when we plunge into the kind of love God provides us with to selflessly love each other for His glory, His love will overflow in our lives. God's ways time and again pronounce His faithfulness to us in their success to preserve and strengthen our relationships. We must always remember that God created this family thing not just to work, but to thrive!

I am a parent of four, a wife of a budding chef, a dreamer and hopeless perfectionist. Unfortunately, those truths about me don't easily gel together to produce a harmonious lifestyle. As you can imagine, my life can be chaotic, unstable and discouraging as often as it is fulfilling. Today I discovered something that brought tremendous hope to my heart.

I am homeschooling my 5-year-old daughter, which tends to be a painful reminder of all my inadequacies. Since Christmas break, we have felt such defeat in returning to our work. It seems like so much of the progress we made last semester has faded, and we have lost our way on the road to learning. We both find ourselves avoiding the schoolwork with any chore or restful diversion.

This afternoon as we were doing just that - reading a mystery novel and flying with Tinkerbell and Silvermist - I looked up from my indulgence and just took in my daughter's face. So often she can become the child taking a toy from a sibling or the picky eater taking 45 minutes to eat eat a quarter slice of personal pizza, and the frustrating interactions can mask her with a checklist for improvements. In the quiet of that moment, as the other children were napping, those muddying versions of my daughter melted away, and I saw the soft, innocent beauty that glows from within my young child. I felt a warmth within me that I knew so clearly when I held her newborn body in my arms. She is completely unique and special. Her weakness chosen by God just as specifically as her strengths. As the struggles we work through together faded to make just a background for her sweet face, I swelled with renewed purpose and drive.

This evening as we sat and read together, she as distracted and disinterested as usual when she grew weary of failure, I found that God had reshaped my heart with a patience that had not existed before. We pressed through the pages, digging our way through the wrong answers or slow conclusions that would halt us with defeat, and by the end of the lesson she emerged a new student. I watched her suddenly transform before me, reading with the grace of a ballet dancer.

The only thing that changed, was my return to my love for her. It was not that I had stopped loving her, I had just begun to act as though it was not important as being a firm parent or a masterful teacher. Being her mother today meant being the support to her weakness and the confidence to her insecurities. As my child, she so easily trusted my lead and followed me into a new plateau. It made me see that God has designed our lives to work in just this way. He is always waiting with this perfect love. It does not criticize to perfect us. It does not see us as a project or a measure of success or failure. It only loves. It is a moment by moment, perfect footing under each step we take. If we can find that childlike trust and relax into its triumphant embrace, he will raise us up to places we could never go on our own - for His joy! As elated as my little learner was at her own accomplishments, she could not know the heights to which my spirit soared.

As I begin a new day tomorrow, I pray that my view will not revert back, but only grow more resolute and clear on this new road. Whatever hurdles life calls us to jump, there is the power beneath our feet of a Father who created us to overcome.