In the Hill Country, you learn pretty quick that bedtime is more of a suggestion than a law. My 15-month-old treats it like a rodeo event. She thrashes, kicks, babbles in tongues only angels could decipher, and radiates enough heat to make me wonder if we should charge the power company. And there I am, the designated mattress again, hoping this is the night she finally calls it quits.
Then, a miracle—or so I thought. She lays her head on my stomach. Quiet. Still. I dare to believe it’s over. Sleep at last. But no, she pops back up grinning like she just discovered the moon. She starts thumping my belly, eyes wild, arms flailing, and then comes the roar. A full-on jungle roar. At first, I thought she was just being silly. But then it clicked.
My stomach had been growling—loud, long, and hungry. I’d skipped dinner, and she figured the noises were coming from some beast inside me. To her, bedtime had turned into a safari, and she was the brave little lioness saving the day. (Dad joke break: What do you call a dad with a hungry stomach at bedtime? A “snackrifice.”) The truth is, she wasn’t just playing.
She was naming the unknown, making sense of it all in the only way she knew how. And I sat there, half laughing, half delirious, realizing what a wonder it is that a child with no words can still preach whole sermons. Because it wasn’t just my stomach that was empty. I’d been skipping patience, gratitude, joy in the little things. I was hungry in the soul, not just in the belly.
And right there, in her roars, I heard a reminder of Jesus’ words: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). By the time she finally laid her head down and drifted off, I whispered a prayer of thanks. For her. For the lesson. For the wild reminder that sometimes God speaks through the smallest lions in our lives.
Parenting may feel like a jungle, but the sweetest truths are often hiding right in the roar.
By Matthew Willis · From the November 2025 (archive attribution) issue.