When God asks you to give Him those you most cherish

 

July 11, 1993, at seven minutes after five in the morning, Dave and I drove out of Port Angeles. My mother stood beside our car with her arm around Karen, only twenty-one years of age, and together they waved goodbye. Tears streaked down their faces. I choked on my own sobs. How could I survive four years without seeing them? (from Chapter 2, Grandma’s Letters from Africa)

Recently I told you about my mother’s strong—even desperate—objection to Dave and me leaving our kids and our home and moving to Africa. (Click on You’ll need a Kleenex: When parents don’t want their kids to go to the mission field.)

 

During the application process for working with Wycliffe Bible Translators, my mother went through an intense time of wrestling with her own will, her daughter and son-in-law’s will, and God’s will.

 

Somehow, within the months of wrestling and begging and weeping and soul-searching, my mother recognized she had to let God have her daughter.

 

You see, when she was pregnant with me, her doctor feared she’d miscarry so for months she prayed, “Lord, if You let my baby live, I’ll dedicate her to You.”

 

And He let me live.

 

And later He would ask my mother to follow up on her promise to Him about me.

 

That time had come.

 

That was in 1993. Fast-forward to 2014 when, after my mother died, I found the following in her Bible: a photo of the driveway scene I wrote about in Chapter 2, above, and paper-clipped to it was this William Cowper poem in her own handwriting. (See photo below.)

 

O Lord, my best desire fulfill

And help me to resign

Life, health, and comfort to Thy will.

And make Thy pleasure mine.

 

Why should I shrink at Thy command

Whose love forbids my fears?

Or tremble at the gracious hand

That wipes away my tears?

 

No, rather let me freely yield

What most I prize to Thee

Who never has a good withheld

Or wilt withhold from me. (William Cowper)

 

My heart broke and bled when I grasped the message—my mother was offering me up to God so that Dave and I could serve Him, despite the severe pain she and Matt and Karen had already suffered—and would suffer even more in the coming years. “Let me freely yield what most I prize to Thee,” she had written. Discovering that in her Bible after she died was a very emotional experience for me.

 

And I was puzzled by her handwriting—it had gotten sloppy toward the end. That surprised me because her handwriting had always been so perfect. It took me a couple of years to realize why her handwriting got shaky: It was because she was crying when she wrote. No doubt tears streamed down her cheeks and her hand trembled.

 

I’ll never know the magnitude of my mother’s heartaches and the costs she paid. But God bless her for the sacrifices she made—for me throughout my life, and for Him. I choose to believe that He also brought her blessings and joys as a result of her sacrifices, her yielding to His will.

 

P.S. You really don’t want to miss You’ll need a Kleenex: When parents don’t want their kids to go to the mission field.)