Inevitable Evening with Matthew

My sweet boy... We had an inevitable evening of Goodnight time tonight. It started like normal, a hug, a kiss, a prayer and a few random questions to keep the door from closing.  About ten minutes later, I heard a shrieking call to "Mama!!!" (which is NOT typical for Matthew... He's an easy sleeper)

I went back in the room to see my boy whimpering and to hear him say, "Mama, my mind is playing tricks on me to scare me. It's telling me there are monsters under my bed." To which I responded, "Well, ya know what you do when that happens?" He looked at me inquisitively. I cocked my arm, with fingers in firing position and blew up the bottom of his bed. HA HA HA Unfortunately, he was legitimately scared and that did not take care of his concerns. ;)

Take two, "Matthew, do you want to know what we really do when things try to scare us?" I went on to tell him that the devil will always try to scare us, to bother us, but we just have to know that God is bigger than the devil and the devil can not be where God is. I shared with him how, when I was little, I used to often go to sleep saying, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" because I was fighting fear away and the devil can not be where Jesus is!

So, we prayed together. Mama prayed for peace to be in Matthew's room, for angels to fill the room and give no more space for anything scary, and that God would remind Matthew to call out to Jesus when he is afraid so the devil has to run away.

Matthew said, "But what about my mind? I can't control my mind." I said, "Well, that is when we pray. When we pray, God understands that our minds can be weak and He jumps in to make us strong." I reminded him again, he needs to believe that God heard our prayer, that he loves Matthew and that he will sleep sound. I did another hug, another kiss, and walked out the door (leaving it a crack open at his special request... that isn't typical for us).

As I stood outside of his room, I listened in for a minute to hear my 5 year old say, "Get out of here devil. I am with God and YOU can not be here!" I WAS SO PROUD OF HIM! (My eyes just got watery! I want my boys to know how to kick the devil OUT of their lives, from moment to moment when they need to!)

God is good... I'm so thankful for how He swooped in to bring peace to my son and came to my rescue as a mom. He is so faithful and kind and I just love that we can call out JESUS with 100% security HE IS with us.... awesome. Just awesome.