Outdoors, in the theater of God, I sat, stream-side, while girls with nets and grand schemes hunted tirelessly for crayfish and minnows, and tufted dandelion seeds floated on the soft breeze like first snow.
Something lost in the long Minnesota winter was restored on that dappled, grassy floor beneath the towering elm.
Something in my cells was released and flowing again, sap-like and life-giving, streaming LOVE.
How do you teach your children (and yourself) this paradox?
(There is) a two-edged quality of Scripture- the capacity to intensify a passion for excellence with an indifference to human achievement. -Eugene Peterson, Running with Horses
There are so many double-edges to Scripture. Perhaps the "narrow way" is walking carefully down the center of the sword. Your foot slips one way and SLICE, you are taking pride in your own accomplishments...the glory-stealer. Your foot slips the other way, and SLICE, you don't care about the quality of your work...the sluggard.
I have children who teeter on either side, and as for myself, I battle to stay in the middle, though I drift precariously to the pride side, caring too much of others' opinions of me, and then the other, not attending well to the truly important things.
God's grace softens the razor-edges, but the more I care about how I live this faith-life, the more I feel the cut.
Sara Groves sings my heart in This Journey is My Own. Her aching, repetitive challenge in the bridge of the song is this: "Now I live and breathe for an audience of one."
To pour myself out with breathless devotion to a God who loves me beyond my greatest achievement and in spite of my basest failure...this is the God I worship.
And I will tell my children that each thing they do MATTERS, and how they do it MATTERS, because Who they do it for MATTERS, and all must be done for an audience of One.
There was a song recorded by Pat Benatar in the 80's called I Am a Warrior. I remember jamming to it in my bedroom, my finger guns smoking..."shooting at the walls of heartache, bang, bang, I am a warrior."
Since we love a good parody, my husband said I should rewrite this song for my concerts. How about...
I Am a Worrier.
I didn't used to be a worrier. I've always had an innate confidence in my abilities (except, ironically, that I can never confidently spell the word "confidence." Is it a c or an s at the end? Thank you, spellcheck.)
I grew up pretty fearless, always game to try new things and usually finding a decent amount of success. Fearless, that is, until I had kids and became a stay-at-home mom and home school teacher.
A strangling fear creeps in that I am blowing this precious opportunity.
It is the biggest gift God could give me...the freedom to be home with my kids, teaching them, learning alongside them. In the beginning, I painted a Monet dream of our lives, soft brushstrokes, idyllic scenes, homey and relaxed. The books I was reading fed into this vision.
I think, though, we more often look like a Picasso.
You could come hang out with us for a week and think we're a quite normal, cheerful group. This battleground is mostly in my head, where what I imagine doesn't line up with what is.
"We should do things more like this family" can stick like a burr.
"I am not enough for this job" can take root like a thistle weed in poor soil.
The worries branch out to poke my kids and my husband with the subtle, unspoken message that "This is not how I want you to be." They are most pronounced when I'm laying in bed, not quite asleep or awake, my mind a fertilizer.
The closer my children get to growing up, the more I worry. Poor habits I used to dismiss are becoming ingrained in them. Fruit I'd hoped to see is not there yet. I'm just not sure how to do all this.
Wisdom says,
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. -2 Cor. 10:5.
I lean hard into this. It's all I have, really. The ability to tear out weeds and plant seeds of truth. To surrender to His abundant grace and walk the best I can on his weedless path.
To find beauty in the sharp lines and strange angles of this picasso-life.
