Learning to Stand on Peaceful Land Together

I spent the first six months of my son’s life trying to make him sleep in his crib. No matter how sound asleep he was, no matter what I did before laying him down, he woke up immediately or within the first twenty minutes after his body touched the mattress. During the night, I barely got two hours of sleep before he would wake up again.

“What if we tried the playpen?” my husband asked.

“That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed. “Why would he sleep any better in the playpen? It’s nowhere near as nice and comfortable as the crib. Besides, we bought this crib for him—I want him to sleep in it.”

One exhausting morning, after a number of attempts at laying my son down in his crib for his nap, I tried the playpen, as my husband had suggested. An hour and a half later—the longest nap he’d ever taken—my son woke up happy and rested.

I had persisted for six months in my frustrating endeavor. I laugh at myself now and wonder why I didn’t try my husband’s suggestion sooner. I was so determined to make my son sleep in the crib, that I resisted any suggestions that should do otherwise. I began to realize that the bigger issue wasn’t about crib versus playpen but rather my pride.

We often struggle in our relationships with believers we disagree with. What if it’s because we’re hanging on so tightly to our disagreements that we are unwilling to find a peaceful place to stand together? What if we’ve become so focused on what separates us that we’ve forgotten the one thing that holds us all together and by which we will all enter eternity? How do we learn to stand on the peaceful grounds of the gospel together despite our differences?

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