Stop Milking It - Wean for the Win!ಮಾದರಿ

Time for a self-led wean?

For the next few days I’ll share some examples of things in our lives that God might want to wean us off. Perhaps God will give you a little prod as you read through the things I’ve suggested! (God rarely needs to prod my husband as I’m very skilled in being a ‘prod officer’ for my other half on the Lord’s behalf – I’m here to serve!!)

Not all of the things I will mention are bad things. Milk itself is not bad – it’s not withdrawn from a child because it’s harmful, but because the child needs more than milk for their development. Some of the things I’ll mention are bad and do need to be removed, but others may just need to be adjusted and in their rightful place in your life. Most of us still have milk in our diet in some form, it’s not forever banned – it just fits alongside the many other things we need to consume to be healthy and well-functioning.

I believe that God often weans us off dependence on something, not necessarily the thing itself. So taking my example of being made redundant, I was weaned off the security and familiarity of having a job for a period of eighteen months while I learnt about pride and God being sufficient. But I have a job again now – it’s not always about something being removed forever, it’s about adjusting our relationship to the thing so it’s in its rightful place in our life and most importantly, so God is in his rightful place.

There’s now a thing called ‘baby-led weaning’ giving the child some control over choosing and eating different finger foods. I believe that some weaning times are not within our control, like my period of unemployment. Yet at other times we can actually choose a self-led wean – deciding to wean ourselves off things we recognise are not helpful or are actually detrimental to us.

Reflection

I will list several things over the next two days that I believe we need to check ourselves about, examining if we need to be weaned off them.

Before you read my list, ask God now to highlight anything in your own life that you may need weaning off, or to go through a self-led wean on, and let’s see if we get any matches!