Monday, February 9, 2015

Where You Go I'll Go

Labels seem silly to me but I've always been fond of the SAHM title. I love staying home with my children (most of the time). It's fulfilling and it pushes me to depend on God in a different way than I've ever had to in my life before. The term "pray without ceasing" takes on a different meaning in motherhood. "God please help me to hold my lunch down as I clean up this poop off the bathroom walls," or "Lord give me patience. Help me to not raise my voice at Elijah for asking for the 100th time today if he can watch T.V," are among some of my more common prayers. They may seem petty, but I assure you they are not.



This SAHM term is one I've come to embrace and love. I struggled for so long just to be okay with being primarily mommy. I had endless moments of feeling like I was disappearing and mommy-hood had just taken over all of my being. Then almost suddenly, God gave me a wake up call. "I've called you to this! It's a gift to be a mother." I would hear it in the whispers of my early morning devotionals, in craze of getting ready for the day, or in the sleepy yawns of bedtime. From that point on, I began to discover a joy I was missing before.

But so often in this life, just when I become settled, God unsettles me. Friends do you ever feel that the older you get the crazier circumstances become and there is absolutely no escaping it? And as frustrating as that is, I know God meets me in the chaos of life. I think about Jesus walking through the torrential storm on the water. This is easily one of my favorite miracles he performs. It is in those moments of desperation that God reveals himself in INCREDIBLE ways. So as much as my body longs for comfort, my spirit longs for the storm a little too.The storm is where I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God will show up.

So here I am settled in motherhood, and BAM, God's like, "I think you need to go back to work." Okay that's an exaggeration. I've always said that I am not called to children's ministry, pretty much from the time I became a mother. And now here I am, in children's ministry. It's a pretty hilarious process actually. No one from church offered me the position which is typically how it works. I offered myself up for the position, dragging my feet behind me the entire time. "Wahhh wahh wahh, God I don't want to do this! Don't make me." How pathetic am I, right? Realistically I am not alone in this mentality. Great prophets threw tantrums before God: Moses, Jonah, Job, David, I could go on. But don't we have this mentality that this kind of defiance always comes before GREAT revival? That isn't what I'm looking at here. I mean I do love these toddlers, but they aren't going to start singing, "Lord I give you my heart," and pray for God to be Lord of their lives.

Here is what it really boils down to though. When you say, "Where you go I'll go," that doesn't always mean taking a trip across the ocean to do God's work, creating an Odyssey-type story in the process. The idea that working in a children's classroom is less valuable than digging wells overseas, is an idea that Hollywood has created and the Church has bought. I've bought into it. Just because something has better entertainment value, does not make it "holier work" in the eyes of God. It's easy to say, "God I want to do big things with your strength. I want you to use me for your miracles." Then God says, "Okay care for the children." "Ummmm.....that's actually not what I had in mind." But shouldn't it be exactly what I have in mind? Jesus didn't just suddenly appear on this earth and say, "Here I am. I've come to save." He came as a baby. His diaper was changed. He was bathed. He made messes that needed to be cleaned up. Those things, they made a difference.

So as I begin this new journey, as I step foot into the loud and messy classroom of two and three-year-olds, pray for me my freinds. Pray that I see Jesus walk on water! Pray that the children see it too! Pray that I would not be content in comfort, but instead be joyful in the beautiful storm of children that surround me.

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