The leftover smell of home made chicken pot pie is still curling throughout the house. Dinner has been served and eaten. Dishes are rinsed and loaded into the dishwasher and the counters are wiped off. Baby is asleep. The others are scattered around - coming in and out of the family room where Dad is reading and I am sitting - praying and thinking, listening to praise music. That is until I decided I needed to write.
Moments like these are fleeting. I don't want to dwell on the thought, but I know that even a year from now things will be different. God willing, our oldest will have graduated from high school. I don't think they will be off to college immediately, but they are planning on an overseas mission trip next Fall for a few months. Either way, they will be adults. Seeking God's will for their own lives - forever entwined, but also apart from ours.
Right now our lives are uncertain in many ways, there are many changes on the horizon - yet the certainty of "us" is solid. We are together. We are a family still under the same roof. For the first time I am really starting to contemplate the fact that it will not always be so. The fact that the first 2/5 of my "job" of raising adults is almost done. Soon, we will move to the "friend and mentor" stage of our relationship. It is exciting, yet overwhelmingly sad when I think too deeply about it.
We have not been perfect parents by any means. Our oldest children have been the guinea pigs on which we have practiced. So many mistakes - all made with the best of intentions. Even with our little number five, some days I don't feel like I have come all that far with my skills. What I do know, however, is that love is the central theme around all that we do. Love for God. Love for each other. All I truly desire is that my children walk with God. If they do, I trust all the rest will fall into place.
I look at my "nest" and I am happy and content. Even at the times when bickering seems constant, there is an underlying "cushion" of love and acceptance. Grace given to those who mess up, forgiveness granted and hearts of compassion towards each other. This, my comfort zone, stands in stark contrast to what I see when I open my front door - or turn on my computer. What I see "out there" is brokenness. I see the havoc that sin wreaks in the lives of even those who follow the Lord. In this life, none of us are immune. I believe with all of my heart that we are more than conquerors of the sin that once ruled our lives. However, what I see with my eyes is the stench and decay of a fallen world. A world that seems completely out of control. I see people that I know love the Lord barely hanging on. Dangling over the precipice where their sin has thrown them. Believers in Jesus Christ, those who are supposed to represent Him to a fallen world - hopeless themselves. Friends, there is a vicious battle raging in the Heavenlies. I am so thankful that I know the outcome.
Yet, the question remains; how does this happen? I don't have the answer to that. Today, I am as confused and heart broken by it as I was yesterday when I found out about yet another believer, controlled by sinful choices. As confused as I was a few months ago when I heard of yet another adulterous affair in my circle of friends.
I don't mention these things to judge. I mention them because they rip my heart out. They also terrify me. I look around at my circumstances. My precious, precious family. My husband. The man God has charged with protecting our children and me. This man of integrity that is strong, godly, and faithful. How do men like this fall?
My children. They are yet innocent, pure, and trusting. They believe good things about others. They desire spouses of their own. Faithful men and women to be their lifelong partners. Will they be able to find them in this world gone out of control? I don't know, and that terrifies me all over again!
I don't want to turn melancholy in this post. I am so thankful for what God has given me that sometimes it literally just brings me to tears. I look around at my children, who love each other and love their Daddy and me and I weep. I know that everyone doesn't have this. I know that there are parents who cry themselves to sleep at night, begging God to bring a wayward child home. I don't pretend that I had anything to do with this. Yes, we obeyed God's call to home school, but the fact remains, He called. He has drawn my children to Himself. Each one individually, into a personal relationship with Him and we are believing that He will also draw our youngest in His time. Christ gets all the glory! Left to my own devices, I don't know where I might be today.
All the same, my heart is just shredded tonight, for my friends who are suffering. Several people I am praying for, with their own personal agonies. I feel unworthy of the husband and children that God has given me. So unworthy of the love He has bestowed. So thankful for these He has blessed me with.
Still, I will admit to the paralyzing fear that leaves me trembling. I am not a planner in the organizational sense of the word, but I do like to know the inside track in heading off disaster. How do godly people fall so deep into sinful behaviors and addictions that they ruin their own lives and the lives of those they love? Were they simply not believers in the first place? Is God separating the wheat from the tares? The side of me that is quick to judge says that must be it. God is really working on that side of me though, and tonight I feel nothing but sadness towards the recent events that have been brought to my attention. I am sure in some cases, it is true, the person was simply a fake. However, in the cases I have recently been made aware of, I know these people love Jesus. I know they want a relationship with Him. Therefore, I am left with the same question I started with - how do godly men (or women) fall?
I hate to end this post with so deep a question, but I truly have no answer and I am exhausted from the past two days of praying and thinking about it. All I know to do right now is continue to pray for my friends and to never stop thanking my Heavenly Father for the love and blessings He has given me. I know that I deserve nothing good in this life and that anything good that comes out of me is only Him! I pray that somehow He will use me to bless those around me who are suffering.
1 comment:
Hi Shelby
I heard a sermon once on this by someone I trust. They said that it starts with a single choice. A choice that by itself is not bad but just not what God has Called them to or maybe a little to the left/ right of where they should be.
Then they make another, followed by another. All tiny little steps but in the wrong direction.
And one day they are outside His Will, isolated and away from His Voice. And they fall.
I don't think it's one decision but a whole series of them. And they then end up in a space that would have been unthinkable to the old them.
I think most did really know Christ and still do. But their consciences have been seared by distance from God and turning away from Him time and time again.
Over time they have become blind to His voice. And so have fallen.
It scares the heck out of me and I am constantly checking to see where we are at. No-one can say they will never fall or find themselves in a space that is unimaginable right now.
We need to keep guard. Over our marriages and our kiddies.
Thanks for the reminder xxx
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