‘You Just Want My Attention, Lord’: What God Taught This Actress Through Her Infant Son

Published: November 5, 2025

By Mallory Mattingly

Sometimes God teaches us powerful lesson about Himself through our children. Actress Alexa PenaVega recalled how a moment with her then five-month-old son, Ocean, revealed something the Lord was trying to tell her.

“If you want to be humbled, have kids because they will humble you very quickly and teach you so much. The Lord uses them to grasp your heart. And He did that with Ocean,” the mom began to say in a conversation with Stream Studio. “He was like five months old, and I had all these toys laid out on the floor for him and, you know, just trying to play with him. But I just wanted to see him. You know, I’m like a mom wanting to see his little smile. And so I kept taking the toy, but I kept bringing it closer to my face to say hi. But he just kept following the toy, and I kept saying, ‘Oh, Ocean. Hi, hi.’ But he kept looking at everything that was on the floor.”

“So, I just started moving everything out of the way until there were no longer any distractions for him to look at,” she continued. “And then he saw me. He caught my gaze. And then he started smiling and giggling, and that filled my heart so much. But that was such an aha moment for the both of us because it wasn’t as simple as just like, ‘Oh, here’s this little kid looking at me.’ I really felt like God was saying, ‘That’s literally what I’m trying to do for you guys. For you and Carlos, I just want you guys to look at me.'”

As all parents know, life with kids can be so busy, making it hard to find time for God.

“It’s easy for us to get into seasons of, ‘Lord, I’m so busy. I’m so sorry. There’s just so much going on,'” PenaVega shared. “Especially in motherhood. I love my kids, but finding alone time with God is so hard. And it doesn’t look like the old times I used to have in my prayer closet where I would sneak away for hours and just spend time with the Lord. But that doesn’t mean He can’t meet me, and that doesn’t mean I can’t meet Him.”

She continued, “And I think that moment was the, ‘Oh my gosh, God, thank you for showing me this now so I don’t have to find a harder way to be humbled or a harder way to have to find you.’ It was definitely an eye-opening moment of, ‘You just want my attention, Lord.'”

PenaVega and her husband, Carlos, certainly enjoy their time with their kids, sons Ocean, 8, and Kingston, 5, and daughter Rio, 3.

“No…we don’t celebrate Halloween…what do we do instead? Dress up in our matching christmas pj’s and watch movies and open Pokemon packs!” she posted on Halloween alongside sweet snaps of her family.

The PenaVegas announced the stillbirth of their youngest daughter, Indy, in April 2024.

“Your valley can become a mountain top, and quickly, if you just let God completely take control,” Alexa said of Indy’s death while appearing on the “Got It From My Momma” podcast.

“It carries two things and both can be true,” the SPY KIDS actress continued. “It carries a lot of pain which, you know, that hurts, but it also carries so much life, and it’s so weird to say that. She carries so much joy. I never thought I would experience joy and loss, and yet I have so much joy from her life. But what He did through that loss and what He did with that pain — it was not without purpose.”

Like God reminded PenaVega, we all should set aside distractions to spend time with Him.

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