Well Done, Good and Faithful

      When I was seventeen I posted the verse that reads, “‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” on the ceiling above my bed.   I wanted a constant reminder of what I was aiming to do in my life.  I paired the verse with a print of a young woman working in the fields. 

I had a goal in mind and a picture of hard work coupled with that vision.  But, my flesh and my appetites lacked discipline.  I think I wanted the results of a life lived like the Scripture verse and the painting, but I had not anticipated the work those goals would require.  I was young and naive.  I had not tasted much suffering and I had earthly comforts in mind more than spiritual gains.  But God answers the prayers of our hearts when they align with His.  And He would help me to learn what I needed to be a faithful servant, mostly through being a wife and mother. 

When I became a mother I had romantic visions of me pushing the baby in a stroller on sunny afternoons and making beautiful home made meals while the baby slept peacefully in his cradle.  Enter reality.  No sleep, a crying stinky baby, and a lot of time alone.  This reality was not matching the romantic life of motherhood I had dreamed up.  I needed a new vision, a vision that would encompass the reality of my life.

Motherhood x 5

I know I prayed countless prayers of “God help me!”,“I am drowning here, teach me what to do.”, and “Don’t let me come up with this Mom thing on my own, teach me Your ways.”  The disadvantages of living at the end of the 20th Century for a young stay at home mom had caught up with me.  I was swimming against the current of our culture and I needed some guidance.  And so, as my parents had engrained in me, I sought to learn what I needed to learn.  Thus began the care and feeding of our first born, Jackson.

Those early years were more trial and error than confidant, peaceful mothering.  But I learned, and God always provided what I needed to learn.  I wanted the best.  I didn’t want to do anything by halves.  I wanted all that God had for me in this role and so I pursued Him and His Word.  I wanted truth.  Anything I read or listened to or watched had to be grounded in Christ and His Word.  Anything else was suspect.  And so, my humble education began.

As I have pondered over the years of mothering and wifing, I see a pattern in my life.  My life has been a series of humbling situations and circumstances.  I have not walked an easy care free path without resistance.  On the contrary, I have had to work with a plow in one hand and a sword in the other.  The battle for my heart, soul, and mind is very real.  To do anything faithfully and truthfully, one must be alert and on guard.

But with a harder path much grace is given.  I feel as if I have drunk and swam in rivers of grace my whole life.  Gracious protection and provision have followed me all the days of my life.  And I am humbled as I think of it. 

                                                          

Worth the fight

Mothering has been an amazing grace in my life.  The calling of motherhood has shaped and changed me and taught me much.  There are a few truths or axioms that I have stumbled upon in my journey as a mother.

First, a child is not a possession, but the fruit of life.  There is nothing more precious than life.  Life is miraculous in any form.  A child is a wonder and should be viewed as something to marvel upon.  People are not ours to own but to graciously care for. Where do we go to learn about how to care for these precious fragile souls?  To the One who created them.  He knows, not the world.  The Lord calls us to care and nurture and teach the life that He has made.  The world sings a siren song of idolatry.  Turn your child into something that you can manipulate to give you the love, joy, and satisfaction that you crave in life.    

Our problem is that we live in this world but are not a part of it.  So we grow up children in a world that we are not made to love.  We love the people in the world but not the world itself.  There in lies the paradox of parenting.  We feed and tend and nurture in ways very foreign to most.  We receive messages spoken and unspoken telling us we are wrong, and are in fact harsh and cruel to train up a child in the ways of the Lord.  And so we must set our faces like flint to learn from the One who made us and our children.  We need to look ahead and not turn to the right or to the left, but follow the voice of the One leading us when the way is dark and narrow.  

Everyone wants to know how to raise children in this ancient and godly way.  But, I have found that it is not so much in the how but in the who. If we sit at the feet of the One who loves and cares for us we will lack nothing as we feed His lambs.  But is this too abstract, too ethereal?  No, it is a training of the heart and mind to listen and to follow as He leads and speaks.  There are specifics of how, but we will never follow the how if we do not believe and trust the One who is teaching us the whys of parenting. 

So, here are some applications of what I have learned.  You cannot give someone something when you have nothing to give them.  First, you must obtain what the child you are caring for needs.  My children need hope, love, joy, grace, strength, a quiet spirit, teachableness, and patience.  I must endeavor to learn of these things myself. As I learn of them, then I turn and give to them what I have learned.  All the while, I show them that I am cared for and led by a Heavenly Father.  I tell them to pray for me that I would learn what I need to know and I take them to the Lord to learn directly from Him.  For just as my parents taught me, they need to know where to go for themselves to learn the truths of life.

Secondly, we are all sinners and I am not better than my children.  My children teach me and show me my faults daily.  When I see my need for grace and forgiveness then I remain in a state of sensitivity and hopefulness, that my children will grow and change just as I have.  If I have a long, long way to grow in my own growth, why am I surprised that they too have a long, long way to grow?  We sin and run to the Savior for grace together.  We have the same need and the same antidote.  This constant need softens my hard edges and quiets the anxious expectations that I can so readily place on the backs of my children.

Thirdly, I have seen that God provides all that I and my children need.  We have never lacked any good thing.  There is never any loss in Christ.  Because I follow Christ and listen to his voice I know that I will never be in need.  He withholds nothing we need to grow in His likeness and to do His will.  When my children need good friends, He provides them.  When my children need help learning something that I cannot teach them, He provides them with a teacher.  When my children are full of themselves and lack love, He provides the discipline they need to grow in service and love for others.  When my children need to love work and grow in patience, He gives them work and causes them to wait on Him.  When my children are in need, I have learned to go to the Father of Lights from whom all good gifts come.  As I wait on Him, He directs my path and we see the beautiful miracle of His provision and His faithfulness together.

                                                                          

Jackson and "Bub" 

And finally, I have learned that all of life is meant to be lived in seasons.  We almost always fantasize of living in another season of life. We have tasted the bitterness and the gaul of where we are for far too long.  There are times and seasons when the sun will not shine and the rain will not stop. We wait and we wait and we see no end to the storm.  Yet, we can look back and see the faithfulness of God in our lives and in those who have lived before us.  We are safe in the ark of God.  He carries us to where He wants us to go and we can trust his plan.  There is always a day when the window can be opened and the sun can be felt on our sallow faces. We can look up and see the olive branch of the many prayers that we have prayed coming in the peaceful mouth of the dove.  He will never let the righteous go hungry, but satisfies all who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  So we learn to quiet ourselves and wait on the Lord in our current season.  As we wait, we grow strong, and we find ourselves lifting holy hands in thanksgiving for all that He has done, in every season. 

Now I have a child that I have endeavored to grow up in the fear and admonition of the Lord that is hearing the call of manhood.  He is preparing to go and follow the voice of the One who will teach Him to be a man.  This is a time for me to ponder and cherish all that I have seen and tasted; it is a time to wait and see the fruit that will be born of the seeds that I clumsily endeavored to plant in his life.  

                                                                   

Well done my son.

As I think of that painting above my bed, I smile to think of all that I did not know but somehow had the forethought to pursue.  I know that it is all of grace. In fact, I feel the need of this grace all the more.  Like so many of you, I awake each day looking to see where I need to weed and water and cultivate today.  
       Today I am thankful for all that the nurturing and caring of Jackson has taught me.  The season has come for me to turn to him and say, “Well done, my son, well done.  Now enter the hard fought but joyful life that your Lord has in store for you.”  

 ~ Your Fellow Sojourner

"Mother and Child" by Mary Cassatt

Dream On

        Do you dream? I have had conflicting thoughts on dreams.  Will my dreams carry me too far away from reality?  What if I push all of my dreams away, what will I have left to hope in? Even as I know that I have been called into this time to live, I cannot help but dream.  

Dreaming can be a coping mechanism - a way to turn on the television screen of our minds and let it take us away from our monotony and pain.  But I find that dreams can also ground us in the truth.  

Jesus told us He came not to be the panacea for all of life’s pain but to give us life more abundantly.  He said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  An abundance of something is a generous amount.  He takes our life here and expands it to encompass eternity.  And this is why we dream.  

                                                 

Elais' imaginative drawings ~ they always tell a story.

Dream worlds are a sign that our souls belong to more than what we can see.  We are not satisfied with what this world has to offer.  There are things we want to forget, run away from, and not accept.  There is inequity, loss, pain, suppression, and death here.  Death and dying, in all facets of life, has invaded what should have been a beautiful existence. 

While we are living out our days here on terra-firma we must dream; without it our souls suffocate.  Stories of dreaming souls are all around us.  Corrie ten Boom’s soaring lark that took her spirit up to the heights as Nazi prison guards beat and persecuted frail women all around her.  Harriet Tubman’s angelic visions of smiling, caring women in white, who reached out to the rough unwanted hands of a slave girl.  C.S. Lewis’ magical world where a great and terrible lion makes mean and selfish children into kings and queens of a fairy land by the sea.  These dreamers kept their troubled souls alive on thoughts of what could be, on what should be. 

No one dreams up more stuff than these three!

When we dream, we often touch what will be.  Without this sense of what is to come, we are easily drug down into the shadows.  Dreams of a new heaven and new earth enlarge our purpose here, giving us life more abundantly in the waiting world.  Even the world itself is yearning and groaning for its newness to come. A redemption awaits. 

And as I wait, I dream of the people I will one day hold again.  I dream of the hardest and most disfigured people I know, healed and made whole.  I dream of seeing the many things that I cannot change here,  perfected in Eternity.  I dream of the time and the conversations and the creations that await me one day.  I dream of no more separation but only unifying wholeness.  
       And I know that these dreams will be because I know the One who calls me to dream.  He is keeping all of these things just as He is keeping me until that Day.  And so, I am quieting my soul, learning to see through a glass darkly.  I am a watchman waiting for the morning; waiting for that dawn where my faith will be my eyes. 

Bella fulfilling some of her musical dreams

~ Your Fellow Sojourner

C. S. Lewis on writing fairy tales for children...

" Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.  Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce any haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.”