Ignore me, under Your mercy

​It continues to be the things in life that make me question most what I believe to be true that are the most refining. 

I saw a quote the other day that “Sometimes you are wrong, and the Bible is right. And then sometimes the Bible is right and you are wrong.”

Motherhood is always that. Refining. And far more now with these teenage years than when they were younger.

It is easier to trust the Lord with my kids when it’s with winning or losing ball games, finding friends, and in the milestones. It’s easier to trust Him with the daily protection and the daily care.

It is far harder now to trust Him with their cars late at night and with their swooning and broken hearts, and with bad influences, and college processes, and concerning choices.  It is harder to trust Him with seasons of bad attitudes. 

It’s easier to find my worth in Him when i love you mommy’s are frequent, and when they turn to me for everything and tell me everything. Much harder to stand firmly in who I am in Him when I am their safe space to treat poorly, or when I am ruining their lives.

These teenage years, they are certain that you know nothing, and the more you try to help and to support, the more you start to believe them. I am almost daily having to ask Christ and them for grace and forgiveness and help in understanding.  I hope I am not messing them up. The world is a very hard one to raise them in.

When Stan Key was here, he spoke one night about how we are exiles in Babylon as Christians. This world is not our home, but it is the land we are in. We will live in this foreign land and we will die here. Our neighbors are to be loved, not avoided and not followed. Our truth is to be firmly His, not the culture we live in. These things feel easier now I am older than when I was 17. Maybe I am firmer in my faith. Maybe I am just older. Maybe I am too tired to care about all the things I did before.

We are exiles, raising our children to be Christ-followers in a land that does not follow Him, and these teenage years, so many pressures, temptations, and lies shout. 

Someone told me the teenage years are pay and pray, pay and pray, and man alive were they right! We can barely keep up with the requests and needs and wants of 2-4 teenage girls….but more I can barely keep up in carrying them in prayer! 

I always marveled at the idea of “praying without ceasing” and it is no longer a mystery! Parenting through the launch of our children is a continual prayer conversation. 

I’m so thankful our prayers can be mumbled and jumbled and sarcastic and weary.  They can be muttered and meshed and incoherent and bipolar. I’m so thankful our prayers can be nagging or unexplained or unjustified or in process or limited perspective. 

How many times I have called out to Him a long list of passionate facts, only to add at the end that of course I could be entirely wrong about everything I just prayed and if so, to please ignore me, ignore me under His mercy.  

How many times I have nagged Him about children it would be harmful to nag.  How many times I have pointed out the same issues to Him when it would have been infuriating to point them out to the culprit. How many times I have seen Him minister to hearts that I have fought not to try to control! 

He works best with me on the sidelines praying, that is for sure. So often as I pour out my frustrations with one of the kids on God, He reminds me how well and patiently He has loved me, stubborn and blind, just like them.  Every time I grow frustrated or weary, He reminds me that His steadfast love has never yet failed me…could not I show them that? 

And still in the middle of every day as I navigate lunches and carpools and clean uniforms and practice schedules and appointments…. As I navigate anxious hearts, and late homework assignments, and messy rooms and grouchy moods… there are so many sweet reminders of the richness. 

The richness of children, many. The richness of friends who are living life faithfully, all of us in our corners, all of us together, not alone. The richness of a bold and anointed and Bible-teaching husband. The richness of a heaven-culture church in a foreign land, being The Church so well. The richness of nine healthy people under one roof, living in relative peace and lots of laughter and His daily provision. The richness of the world not being our home, and the information of life being information, not Truth. The richness of a God who sees and tenderly hears messy prayers, and doesn’t just see and listen, but moves. 

These hardest seasons… What is He teaching you? How is He sustaining you? How can we spend these last few minutes trusting Him, wildly? 

There will be times when your Heavenly Father will appear to you as an unkind friend, but remember –– He is not. 

The time will come when everything will be explained. When God appears to be shrouded, will you hang on with confidence in Him?

There will be times when your Father in Heaven will appear as if He were an unnatural father, as if He were callous and indifferent, but remember— He is not. 

If all you see is a shadow on the face of the Father right now, hang onto the fact that He will ultimately give you clear understanding and will fully justify Himself and everything He has allowed into your life.

Stand firm in faith that what Jesus said is true, although in the meantime you do not understand what God is doing.

O Chambers

our intimate possession

 oh MAN I miss the creativity and bandwidth of writing. 

I am 99% sure I know what has sucked all of those creative and bandwidthy things out of me.

"Starts with a T", Matt would say. "End is EENAGERS."

I love them. I pour everything into them. I serve them, pay for them, pray for them, stay up at night over them, get up early for them, drive them, listen to them, clean up after them. Pay and pray, pay and pray. I love them. dearly. 

But they are killing me slowly, the eye rolls, sighs, pushing the limits, messes, and how dumb they think I am. I canNOT keep up with the moods, the emotions, the angst, the friends, the boys, the choices, the schedule, the bills. Cannot keep up.

I REMEMBER, Mom. If I could call you and apologize, I WOULD be calling every single day. 

I'd call my dad if I could and apologize to him, too, and to him for her. 

SO, I'm apologizing to you all for my horrific, entitled, mistaken teenage attitude, and one day, if the Lord gives me the days, they will apologize, too.

It is a hilarious joke of the Lord's, when I told Him I dreaded and could not do the teenage years, that He has given me FOUR TEENAGE GIRLS. at once. He is getting me back for all the things. 

What I'm learning, since Greg always asks, is how much I need His help...how much they are His...how much He can be trusted, how much I have to be unoffendable, and how much who I am is in HIM and not in them. I'm learning how "be anxious for nothing" means this too. How LOTS of Scripture means this, too.

It's hard when all you are has been pouring everything into them for so long. When you literally grew them inside yourself and have given them everything out of yourself for so long.  When your full time job for 17 years has been pointing them to Jesus. 

When you see them forgetting. See them confusing. See them questioning. See them struggling. 

Ah, the joys of Emma, throwing a tantrum over being hungry and the puzzle piece not fitting in just right. Give me toddlerhood.

How they remind me of me, these girls! What they say that I have said. How they remind me of the old sin nature within myself. How the Lord is patient and loving and tender with me. How His love is SO deep and wide even when I chose me again and again. 

O Chambers reminded me this week that our faithfulness must be tested, because it can only become our intimate possession through conflict. Believe steadfastly on Him, he says, and everything that challenges you will strengthen your faith. 

Everything. 

These dear girls, and the challenge and angst of these years, can kill me or strengthen my faith, all depending on whether I believe steadfastly on Him.

These tests will either prove my faith right, or will kill it...and I'm too stubborn for all that dying and bitterness.

Ask my girls. 

How Christians Should Live in Babylon

 

The Real Jesus, the Cross, and His Scars

 We just wrapped up a priceless five days with Rev. Stan Key, a friend who we met in Haiti and whom I serve alongside on the board of OMS and have truly grown to love. He preached so many good messages, but this one was my favorite and I wanted to share.  His simple and bold unpacking of the transformative Gospel was JUST what I needed. 

consider HIM

This was the first week of school.  

With a pre-k, 3rd, 6th grader at home, and a freshman, sophomore, junior and senior heading to high school. 

Yes, it was everything that sounds like. 

Happy home, great books, bickering, great schedule, 8-noon precious time....

And crazy mornings looking for books and socks and senior jeans and emotional afternoons of bottomless snacking, meals, emotions, anxieties and drama...and late nights. 

Add in a very necessary family meeting or two, and the normal cheer practices, Bible study, hosting small group...I have been hanging by a thread. 

The moments before everyone else wakes up have been my LIFEbreath. 

His steady, flowing to me has been just what is needed.

I do NOT want to be drowning in the middle of the priceless opportunity to disciple these five to seven kiddos...especially through these hard and final teenage years. 

But man alive is. it. hard. 

One morning at 7, a single mom friend carrying an incredibly heavy load called me bawling and we both were by the time we hung up. One afternoon a sweet new friend was bawling in her coffee, concerns over a major relationship in her life. One evening one of my best friends stopped in frustrated and discouraged, and she should be. And I am reminded how much we need each other...and also how much I desperately need HIM.  

When I spend that hour before the day begins on the porch swing, praying and listening and in His Word...it sustains me. He is what is needed. And gives us the wisdom and the strength that is needed. 

When I watch the sun coming and complain about being spoken to harshly in a way that really hurt me, He leads me to Hebrews 12...Consider Him who endured from sinners SUCH hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint of heart. 

Consider HIM.

Wrote it on my hand as the hurt and anger melted, and throughout the day, "Consider HIM" was exactly what was needed. 

Another morning I was praying with the sprinklers, tears pouring down my face over pain in my teenagers lives, in several friends lives, I ask Him what to do in the same hour He leads me to Colossians 4:2. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it all with thanksgiving. 

Continue steadfastly in prayer. 

OK. I can do that. That's a plan. That's a plan I can follow, no matter the chaos. 

A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace, I can share with the girls as they are tempted to back-and-forth over after school cookies with "did you hears" and "you know what she saids?"

"Do NOT get narrow or stingy in the area of hospitality, or the blessing it is of God will grow thin" the devotional book I'm reading reminds me as I prepare my house for Testimony Tuesday and 35 for dinner...the most powerful night of my month but one I never really "feel" like preparing for. 

Wednesday night Bible study reminds me He disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. 

Most, when I'm focusing on Him, I'm reminded that I can trust Him.

With this precious teenager.  With this problem. With this injustice. With this broken situation. With this impossible problem. 

And while I'll fight all day long for the people and good He has put in my path, He reminds me...

They're His kids. His problem. His injustices. His impossible situation. 

And I don't ever need to doubt that He SEES it. Even better than I do. And He's fixing it. 

As Ben and Nora and Emma often repeat during our homeschool devotions, "God made it, it's His. We broke it. And Jesus, Jesus is fixing it."

If you're hanging by a thread...make it Him.

free indeed

It took all day Tuesday to cover, but Wednesday I got to return to the prison an hour from here for another baptism.  Imma have a hard time EVER saying no to these. Who gets to go into prison to witness prisoners set free!

I would have bought tickets. 

Forty men this time were baptized, one after another, some under street names and some under the ones mama gave them. There were no families there this time, and being family for those men was a heavy gift. I collected all the names and stories I could after, tears still soaking my t-shirt at seeing man after man brought out of the water, free indeed. Singing praises together. 

washed in the water

washed in the blood

I'm as good as new

oh hallelujah

It always hits me, singing about the blood in Emmanuel's veins...the murders and the lacks of forgiveness both sent Him to the cross. The rapes and the gossip. The sinful attitudes and the sinful actions. The worry. The complaining. The lack of trust. The drug deals. The Thefts. 

It ALL was enough for God to send His Son. I need it just as badly. It was shed just as much for me. 

I was just as lost. I am just as lost without Him. 

My brothers in Him are every bit as free. 

It's powerful.

As men were being baptized, "CONVICT" printed on the back of all their soaking shirts, the Lord drew my attention to a GIANT of a man standing in the doorway.  Not in. But watching. 

He was huge in stature and huge in shoulders and arms and chest...with a black plastic beaded cross around his neck and white t-shirt.  Glasses.

I asked Matt who he was, and Matt, who teaches at the prison almost every Wednesday now, told me his name. Some kind of gang enforcer in his past life.  I asked him to introduce me later, but as soon as the last man was brought out of the water, Matt was surrounded by brothers checking in. 

I spoke to a few men, and then saw the giant man was still alone.

I never ask them what they did (I sure am thankful strangers don't ask me what I've done!), just where their families are and to tell me about the people they love.  The church prison ministry makes fun of me for this, but I decided from before I ever started going to prison that I would approach every brother there as if they stole some kid's bike.

I introduced myself, starting straight up into his face, and asked him where his family was.

California, he said quietly. I came a long, long way to screw up this bad.

Jesus came further to make it right, I heard myself say. 

He knew. 

He told me how much he loved coming to church. The dingy, dark gym in the middle of the prison.

Life out there he says, pointing his head towards the cell block, is all struggle, all the time. All fighting. All struggling. All effort. But you come here, like today, and it's just joy. Everybody's thinking about the same thing. Just Jesus.

I think about Wellspring. The sunny, peaceful sanctuary. 

Do I come there with such joy...a place where the striving ceases and we're all about Jesus?  Do I come there for the same freedom my new friend comes to the gym for? Do I come there for the same washing? Do I bring the same awe and grateful heart over what He's done? 

One by one, these brothers with 2 and 3 life sentences have been becoming members at Wellspring.  Several told me this time seeing my Wellspring shirt, "Hey! I'm a member at Wellspring, too!" and man does it make my heart glad.

I have the sweetest picture of all my Wellspring brothers and sisters together from Wednesday, grins as big as heaven on everybody's face. Wish I could show you.  The Lord isn't finished.

I'm so thankful what He asks us to do--feed the poor, love the orphan and widow, visit the prisoners, speak peace, choose joy--somehow always blesses us back more. 

grateful

 We have been to the end of the world and back, pretty close :). The last 10 days the seven kids and I headed to North Carolina, the first half with Uncle Martin and Aunt Sharon and the second half with Aunt Lisa and the cousins.

It was full (but not too full) of hiking and waterfalls, corn on the cob and motorcycle rides, evening walks and homemade ice cream, precious time with Aunt Sharon and Uncle Martin being loving and patient and good family.  Then it was full of cousin time and pizza and lake swims and paddle boarding and Sleeping Queens and skeeball and chicken wings and so much sweetness and chaos. We stopped and saw Aunt Elisa and her family on the way, and dropped Lily in Birmingham on the way home for Motion Conference. 

It was not exactly restful :) But it was all things classic summer vacation, and the time we had with Martina and Sharon and with Lisa and the girls was SO incredibly priceless. I hated missing life at home...but I needed it. The step away. The different. The family. The refresh. 

And I felt very rich. In family. In children. In teens. In sweet small things. In less busy-ness. In empty schedule days. In slowing down. In being outside all day every day. In Him and His seen-ness.

I'm grateful.

I see Hope

I have the sweetest Sunday school class. 

I hadn't been in Sunday school since I was a little girl.  Three hour church services and little ones kept me from being a part of Sunday school in Haiti, and our beloved church before Wellspring didn't do Sunday school, just small groups.  

So our random, transparent, unconcerned with raw, with tears, with sharing thoughts and testimonies and deep-digging Sunday school class has been a totally unexpected blessing in my life.  We start late. We finish late. We gently correct each other and unknowingly encourage each other and often redirect each other, and I cherish it. 

Today, Holy Spirit came. 

I don't know if anyone else was pierced. But we shared and studied Romans 5:1-5, and when it talks suffering, it is uncomfortable, because there is suffering in that circle. Loss. Infertility. Tumors. Surgeries. Deaths. Brinks of divorce. 

Our little class is sitting on the harsh edge of genuine, painful, ongoing suffering, and the Bible has the audacity to tell us the greatest gift is we have peace with God through Jesus. To tell us we rejoice in our sufferings...they produce endurance, character, hope...and that HOPE will never put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. 

Hope will never put us to shame. 

It will look embarrassing to the world. It might look foolish. Having hope. But Hope in Him will never let us down.  

We shared more hard, more thoughts, more applications, more pondering, and then Wanda, one of my favorite prayer warriors, shared a story of an old woman in her past who was perseverant in prayer. 

For decades Wanda heard her pray for her lost children. Pray they'd go to church. Pray they'd turn to Jesus. Three times a week, every week, Wanda would find this old woman at church praying and praying for her children. 

Yes, I thought. Perseverance in Prayer. 

And then one day, with nothing externally changing, Wanda got to church for hour of prayer, and something had radically changed. The woman who was always praying and crying and begging for her children had entirely changed her prayer. In her 90's, the woman sat with a huge smile of peace on her face. 

I....I...I...I see HOPE, she said. 

I see Hope. 

She died not long after, her prayer every day now filled with the same phrase muttered over and over. 

She saw something that had not yet materialized, and she clung to HOPE.  

Wanda says that one child and grandchild at a time has come to the church, has come to Jesus. The woman's entire family is following Jesus....NONE that she saw. 

He showed her something unseen, and she believed it hook, line and sinker. 

I was pierced by Wanda's words. Instantly, I saw hope in several situations I've always seen and prayed lost. Permanent. Done. 

What situations do I need to stop seeing the reality of and start seeing His?  

He brought two very quickly to my mind. Maybe He's been asking me to cling to HOPE instead of reality for a very long time. 

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Suffering produces not just endurance, but hope...and His hope will never let us down. 

In three days

I needed that! 

Technically, we all needed that ❤️.  

Three days… 

to hear about miraculous healings in Thailand, 

to pray through the long list of OMS missionaries around the globe, 

to learn about the top 10 places the organization is praying intently for workers, 

to dig deeper with Stan Key on salvation as a journey, 

to spend an unexpected evening sharing watermelon with Uncle Dave and Aunt Marilyn, 

to catch up over tacos with the president’s wife and the other two women on the board, 

to hear about the bike shop in Italy that is evangelizing on the street corners to Italians and immigrants from countless countries, 

to have transparent and powerful lunch conversation with brothers and sisters I can’t show you, serving in places I can’t tell you, 

to gather in transformative conversations about loss and grief and anger and Jesus, tears pouring down our faces, 

to catch up with our Haitian brother who serves in the office that Matt long did, 

to discuss strategy and funding and needs and goals and visions, 

to pray over those carrying heavy global burdens,

 

to sing out Great is Thy Faithfulness in a busting room of brothers and sisters from around the globe, singing in more languages than I’ve ever heard at one time,

 

to burn the candle bright at both ends, 

to have a priceless hour for lunch on the way to the airport with the man and woman who are very most like mom and dad in my life, 

to remember there’s a big world outside my own, 

to recall that some of the passions and callings He has put deep inside me are still there, 

to recoil that my family are His first,

to reset my Kingdom focus. 

I am so thankful for people who share their struggles with me freely, that I might hold their ropes and learn their lessons with them.  I am so thankful for people who persevere no. matter. what. and who inspire my socks off.  I am so thankful for the spiritual giants gone before us who prayed and trusted and preached and WENT, packing in their coffins, for they would not retreat.

 I am so thankful for the people who let me push on painful places and who push on mine, producing oil of healing.  I am so thankful for the number of people I rubbed shoulders with this weekend who prayed for Matt and I all those years and struggles and victories in Haiti. 

I’m so thankful for all the laughter that came from good work this week. For all the tears no one hid or shamed. For all the brokenness shared and all the miracles and fruit alongside. I’m so thankful for all the reminders of His faithfulness, and all the sightings of it still.  

I’m thankful for men and woman who look and sound nothing like me who I can’t even communicate with past a smile and a nod who are my brothers and sisters. I’m so thankful for translation apps, and that soon they won’t be needed! 

I’m so thankful for the precious family I have to go home too….if my flight ever stops getting delayed!  And I’m thankful this world is His. 

Weirdo Matt is always planning his funeral, always telling me at random things to remember….what songs he wants, who he wants to preach, what verses he wants read, where he wants buried.  My dream is to die on the mission field. 

Until then, I’m glad to live in it.  

Only one thing

Its been a season of too many things. Another driving permit, one last 4 year old birthday party. Another long, good weekend baseball tournament and another year’s VBS in the books.  Lotsa people fed. Lots of Bible studies and youth groups.  One more cheer camp, lots more 6:30 am practices (I’m sorry. Why.) Lots of extra beloved kids, lots of visits to someone lonely or in pain, all precious.  Lots and lots of driving. 

Everyone told me this was that season, but I had no idea how much it would take to manage everyone’s camps and practices and lessons and appointments.  Some days Emma and I are more taxi drivers than anything else. A million dishwasher exchanges, a million loads of laundry exchanges, never enough time in the day. 

Lots of ships passing in the night for Matt and I. Lots of important relationships and activities by the wayside.  I have missed writing, and fall into bed completely wiped and wondering how I can possibly make it all work tomorrow.

While life had been full overflowing with so many good things, it’s been too much.  Unsustainable, and I wouldn’t want it to be our way of life, anyway. 

So here we are—after busting butt for a week to beg in every favor to cover every single spinning plate, filling the fridge, planning out every child pass off…and almost melting down at midnight with a 3:10 am alarm set—I’m off North for our annual One Mission Society board meetings. 

Life has chaosed to a place it doesn’t feel like I can possibly be gone for 3 days.  It took SO much work and time and sacrifice and friends to even go, I want to passionately promise the kids, one of whom is always hanging tearfully on my leg, I will never leave again ever again not for one hour.  

I remember once a family with six teenage kids coming to Haiti for a week, and telling me how blessed we were to have such a slow and steady and family-focused schedule.  Everyone home and at dinner every evening. No sports and lessons and entertainment pulling us all a million directions. That life in America wasn’t like that.  

I agreed with her patiently, but silently, emphatically, thought it is what you make it, sweetheart. We live like this cause we choose to, and we would in America, too.  

He reminded me that conversation when Matt and I were trying to remember the last time that all 7 of us, and only the 7 of us, had dinner together.  

I thought my boundary of “one thing per kid and church” meant we would never get to this scurried state, but I was wrong.  Turns out church is 24 times 7 if you let it….all such good and precious and important things. Turns out “one thing”, like cheer or baseball in America, is all weekend, every weekend, five weekends in a row like we just finished, though he be seven, or three days a week of practice plus clinics, camps and competitions.  Plus Lily working and her robust social calendar, plus Nora at ASL camp, which notified us at the very last moment an adult over 18 must attend every minute of with her.  

“One thing per kid plus church” doesnt include two days at the DMV for drivers tests, extra appointments at the dentist for an infected baby tooth or dropping teens for babysitting or housesitting or four kids birthdays this summer, or pets or playdates or…

Divide and conquer! Gaga encouraged me a few weeks ago….and while she is right we have divided again and again….none of this feels much like conquering.  

I hear Him gently reminding Martha only one thing is needed.  I see Emma asking me to read her the book….and cleaning up hours later after everyone’s in bed and finding it still unread on the couch.  I see Lily and Sofie both above my eye level, flying  and roller-coastering through their last months in our home, and hear Him urging me not to miss my disciples. I see myself, trying to fill a water bottle at the fridge with one hand while emptying the dishwasher with the other while listening to Ben talk about his birthday wish list and knowing this is stretched beyond His good.  

He reminded me gently at the altar on Sunday that I’ve grown far too exhausted to get up before the house and start with Him and His Word, living instead off snatches of It in four minute intervals throughout the day.  Though He’s reminded me before. Though I’ve promised and affirmed and known the habit’s sweetness and sustaining power. 

All this said, He also gave me an incredibly challenging and painful and sacrificial opportunity last week to shut my mouth and captive my thoughts and TRUST Him, really trust Him.  And I DID, perhaps mostly out of insufficient bandwidth, and on the other side of a dark week, He was faithful. And is redeeming it. Truly. Clearly. In front of my eyes.  

Last time I tried to fix it and control it for Him and created a terrible and long-lasting mess.  This time, I saw Him free-handedly do His miraculous work on hearts, in a matter of days, because I truly trusted Him. 

The circumstance of seeing Him at work poked me with Greg Benson’s ever prodding question, What is God trying to teach you? 

One, that my frustration and disappointment with myself over letting us get here is only beneficial in that it points me to Him….not to beat me up or keep us stuck.  His mercies new every morning, even this 3 am one, are what I need, and a new start, which He is always ready to give, only upon us asking for it.  Whatever you’re beating yourself up over, repent and be forgiven and put your eyes back on Him and go again. 

Two, that when we are certain the earth cannot spin without all our efforts, we have become the god. Our kids the idol. Our events. Our MORE.  Bankrupt. He is the one and only thing we cannot afford to disappoint, cannot afford to rush by, the only One whose efforts are enough and full. 

I’m learning that sometimes disappointing our kids and others and even ourselves is the lesser cost.  Every single YES costs something, and if we don’t guard and be prayerful in our yesses, we will be paying for it in ways that don’t satisfy, that don’t have eternal value, and that aren’t building His kingdom, that aren’t filling us with Himself.  

Maybe I was right when I judged my friend, that our days and schedules and family rhythms and priorities ARE what we make it. But I knew nothing about the pressures of this culture for and in our kids, in our lives….or how hard we’d have to fight. 

Last weekend Ben had a big final tournament game Sunday morning in Starkville.  After several Saturday games, we packed Ben up and brought him home Saturday night for Sunday morning church.  We totally let his team, his coaches, and the other parents down….we were reminded.  The FOMO in me was already writhing, but when the other first baseman woke up super sick and hospitalized Sunday morning, and Ben was not there to play the bag, it almost killed me.  Letting them down and missing out almost killed me. 

We can’t miss church for baseball, I kept telling myself, telling Ben. After all, this is Matt’s job! 

NO. 

His gracious, still small voice instantly corrected me.  I and my commands are not your job. They are your priority. 

I am learning that our true priority is not in what we say it is. I can say dinner together as a family is my priority all I want. That Sunday morning community worship is. That my marriage is. That my time with Him is. 

But if we can’t remember the last time it happened, if we skip it for a play game, if I lose it for a frantic packed schedule, if I’m too doggone exhausted for it… My eyes are not upon Him, and He is NOT my true God and King and Lord. 

I have settled for idols when I have the true and mighty God after me! I have led my family in bankrupt ways when His is better and the only way that satisfies. I have missed the one thing needed when the world told me it was 100 things. Swings and misses I cannot afford. 

Luke 10:38-42

Martha and Mary

[38] Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. [39] And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. [40] But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” [41] But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, [42] but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”