My husband has super hearing.  He can detect the slow-but-steady drip of a faucet across the house.

I also have super hearing.  I can hear a baby cry in the middle of the night from the other side of our tiny home despite being in a deep sleep myself and without the use of a baby monitor.

Someone hand us our capes because we have earned them.

They promise in parenting books that you’ll know your baby’s cry from those of all the other infants wailing in the church nursery.

Not only that, your hearing will be so fine-tuned to your baby, you’ll know the difference between a hungry cry, a frustrated cry, a hurt cry, and “I’m crying for no other reason on earth than that I would like my mommy to hold me right now while standing up and rocking back and forth and maybe even a lullaby would be nice!!!!”

I read that for the first time about 10 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child and preparing to be the Best Mom Ever and thought, “What mysterious magic is this?”

I’m a concrete person.  Abstract assurances that I’ll figure this whole super-mom-hearing-thing out flustered me.  What if I didn’t know the difference between her cries?  Couldn’t they help a new mom out with a CD recording of audio samples?

• Track 1: Hurt baby.
• Track 2: Hurt baby variation 1:  Gas
• Track 3: Hurt baby variation 2: Teething
• Track 4: Tired baby.
• Track 5: Hungry baby.
• Track 6: Frustrated baby.
• Track 7: Needs a diaper change baby.
• Track 8: Nothing is wrong, but baby just needs to cry right now and nothing you are going to do is going to help her stop crying.  Welcome to parenting.

So I’m reading this promise today:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15 ESV)

and this:

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”  (Galatians 4:6 ESV).

And I realize anew the joy of this:  God knows our cry.

Not like us, though, taking our time figuring it all out. Trying it out, getting it wrong, starting again, making progress. Slowly we learn to recognize His voice from the noisy mess of the crowd and the world and the flesh and the Enemy.

But He knows.  He opens those arms of adoption wide and He says, “You can call to me and I’ll hear you.  I know Your voice.  You don’t need to call me Master….you can cry out, ‘Abba!  Father!”

The neglected, the abused, the abandoned, the orphaned may scream for attention and clamor for rescue and notice from earthly fathers who aren’t there or who fail.

Yet, we’ve been given this special gift, the privilege to cry as beloved children of a perfectly loving Father.

How often do we fail to call to Him, though?

We cry out in self-pity.  We cry in anger.  We cry in accusation perhaps or worry or doubt.

I do this sometimes.  I find myself all knee-deep in the mess and want to whine, complain, argue, rant, or plead.

And all I really need to do is hand that trouble right over to Him.  “Abba!  Father!”  It’s the cry that He hears. It’s the cry He knows.  It’s the cry that stirs His heart to compassion and receives His undivided attention.

This is our faith-cry, knowing we need help, knowing He’ll help us.

It’s not worry or fretting, anxiety or terror.  It’s trusting that when we bring Him our need, He brings us His presence.