I could say “Yes” to God, or I could say “No”

A couple of years before we moved to Africa, my husband, Dave, asked me each day, “Have you filled it out yet?”

“It” was my application for Wycliffe Bible Translators. I knew Dave wanted a different job. Maybe his current one lacked purpose. Or perhaps he suffered from a mid-life crisis. All his life, he has yearned to avoid mediocrity, to break out of the status quo. Probably all those factors led to his urgent need to serve God in Wycliffe. 

For some reason, though, I couldn’t fill out the application. I tried several times. I placed my pen on the application, but I couldn’t fill in the blanks. (from Chapter 2, Grandma’s Letters from Africa) 

I determined to set aside time, to attune my ears and heart to God’s, to be alert to His voice. 

Such a process can take weeks, months, maybe years. 

When I did, eventually I seemed to hear God asking me to place Him—not my children and my relationship with them—in first place in my life. 

I stood at a scary, heartbreaking crossroads. 

I could say “Yes” to God. Or I could say “No.” 

Jenilee Goodwin writes that when we sense God speaking to us, “We have to choose yes or no, go or stay, believe or walk away. Hearing God’s voice requires an answer, an action. So often, it’s easier not to ask. If we don’t know what God is asking of us or inviting us to do, we don’t have to choose obedience or answer the call.” 

Oswald Chambers wrote of those times “when our path seems treacherous and uncharted.” Wow. He nailed it—I stood on a treacherous, uncharted path. 

Such times, Chambers said, such paths, are “God’s way of molding us, of capturing our attention so that we focus on Him and not on ourselves. . . . [They are] His means for us to know Him.” (Christian Disciplines) 

And if we are to come anywhere near carrying out the first and greatest commandment—loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:31, Deuteronomy 6:4)—we start by increasingly knowing Him. 

I could have said “No,” I wanted to say “No,” but I said “Yes.” I stepped forward. 

As I told you last week, one by one, I placed my kids on an altar, of sorts, that I had pictured in my mind. I began with my precious Karen. I had to let go, offer her up to God, walk away, and grieve—grieve—for days. 

I repeated the process with son Matt. 

My mourning was palpable. 

This month-long process left me emotionally spent, numb, my heart torn to shreds. 

Words can’t capture the utter rawness, the unspeakable ravages of dying to oneself in order to die to one’s children, even when we do it because God is asking that of us. 

Only after that excruciating process could I fill out the Wycliffe Bible Translators application. 

And after that, and after I dropped it in the mailbox, once again I determined to set aside time, to attune my ears and heart to God’s, to be alert to His voice. 

What would He say? Would He say He wanted us to serve with Wycliffe? 

Even if His answer was “yes,” I could say “no.” I could turn my back and walk away.

 

A tragic surprise ending to the motherhood I always envisioned

My husband, Dave, was determined to move to the mission field, but I wasn’t sure that was God’s will for us. Yet God seemed to be silent—for months. Oh, how I needed to hear from Him! 

The biggest issue was leaving our children. How could we live half a world away from our son and daughter for four long years?—and then another four years? 

Silently I cried out, When I became a mother, I did not plan to walk away from my children after only twenty-one years! 

I always dreamed our children and grandchildren would live nearby and that we’d get together often—but now, this! This felt like a tragic surprise ending to the motherhood I always envisioned. 

At the same time, I knew how much Dave wanted to join Wycliffe Bible Translators. We had worked with Wycliffe before—in South America, when our kids were little—and I believed wholeheartedly in their work. 

When I thought rationally about working with Wycliffe again, part of me felt okay, but I could find no peace about leaving my children. I feared I might die of a broken heart if I had to live so far away from them. What should I do? 

For months, I asked God to show me how to balance my responsibility to my husband, our children, and my Lord. 

And finally—finally!—I sensed some direction from Him. I sensed God asking me to do something similar to what He had asked Abraham—to place his child on an altar as a sacrifice to Him. God’s request would reveal to Him, and perhaps just as important, it would reveal to Abraham, whether God was Number One in his life. 

God told us in the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Jesus called that the first and greatest commandment, saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). 

I knew that God wanted, and deserved, my highest loyalty, and that He didn’t want me to let anything or anybody—not even my children—take priority over Him. However, I knew those things in only an academic way. 

The time had come to move beyond mere head knowledge and to apply those principles to my real life. 

I thought of the times I had felt God’s tug, and the accompanying pain in my heart, while I sang the words—sincerely, I thought—“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”* 

My all. Had I really meant those words? My all? Even my children? 

God seemed to stand there and ask if I would give highest priority to Him and His plans for me rather than to my plans to live near my children. 

But I had questions. First, when Abraham obeyed God and put Isaac on the altar, He let Abraham untie his son and take him home. If I, figuratively, placed my children on the altar, would God “untie” them and give them back to me? Or did He want me to sever my relationship with them? Or, could there be something in between?       

Eventually I knew what I had to do. 

One by one, I placed each person on an altar I had pictured in my mind. I began with daughter Karen. I had to let go, offer her up to God, walk away, and grieve for a few days. 

I repeated the process with son Matt, and then my parents. I did the same with our possessions, our life in Port Angeles, our home, our job security, and our income. 

This month-long process left me emotionally spent but, afterward, I could fill out the application to Wycliffe Bible Translators.  (from  Chapter 2, Grandma’s Letters from Africa) 

Oswald Chambers wrote, “Sometimes we have to look up mutely to God and say ‘I don't understand it at all, but go on with what You are doing.’” Those words surely capture what I felt during those months. 

Chambers went on to say, “That marks a real stage of learning to trust in God.” I was so emotionally and physically exhausted at the end of the month-long grieving process that I couldn’t have put my experience into words, but looking back now, I suppose Chambers was right—I was indeed learning to trust in God. 

Chambers continued: “Spiritual experience has begun; suffering has already deepened the soul.” 

On his Facebook Page, My Utmost for His Highest, Chambers asked—asks me, asks you—“What is God doing that defies understanding? What do I hope to gain by resisting? What can I hope to gain by trusting?” (Christian Disciplines)

*“When I Survey The Wondrous Cross,” Isaac Watts and Lowell Mason, in Baptist Hymnal, ed. Walter Hines Sims (Nashville: Convention Press, 1959) 99.