You’ll need a Kleenex: When parents don’t want their kids to go to the mission field

My mother hated the idea that her son-in-law wanted to take her daughter to Africa.

 

She was adamant. Persistent. Heartsick.

 

Although I never admitted it to her, I understood her opposition. I didn’t like the idea, either, but at the same time I felt I shouldn’t let her interfere with the decision Dave and I needed to make ourselves.

 

It was a painful time.

 

I believe God created mothers to have a special bond with their children—after all, most of us believe our kids are among the most precious gifts God could ever give us. That’s where my mother was coming from.

 

I also believe God created mothers to try in every possible way to protect their kids from anything negative or painful or scary or uncertain. That, too, was where my mother was coming from.

 

And yet. . . . And yet. . . . There’s more than that to the parent-child relationship.

 

Parents need to prepare their children for adulthood and then. . . . they need to loosen their tight grip on the kids.

 

Parents can’t fight their adult kids’ battles. They need to free them to wrestle with life and faith in the best way they know how—and hopefully that’s with God alongside them.

 

At such times, the battle parents can and should fight is this: to pray unceasingly.

 

Many years ago, Amy Carmichael asked herself if she could let go of a loved one, allowing him to endure pain or loss even as God the Father did, noting that God’s love for His Son “caused Him to give that beloved One to suffering for the salvation of a lost world.”

 

She continues, “What do we know of such love? What do I know of it? Am I prepared to give one whom I love to pain or loss, as the Father gave, if only others may be blessed? This, nothing less, was what the love wherewith the Father loved the Son caused Him to do. It is this love and no other that our Lord prayed should be in us. [John 17:26: I have made You known to them, and will continue to make You known in order that the love You have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.]” (Edges of His Ways, 1955)

 

What sacrificial love Amy Carmichael offered up!

 

Lloyd John Ogilvie wrote that “the special calling of mothers is to prepare their children for service and then give them away to follow [God].” (God’s Best for My Life)

 

And my mother knew so well that 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 also ask my mother to follow up on her promise to Him about me.

 

Lloyd John Ogilvie was very instrumental in my mother’s life, and she introduced me to several of his daily devotionals. I’m certain she read a passage in Ogilvie’s Quiet Moments With God in which he penned a prayer asking God to give him “an attitude of fortitude.”

 

And I’m sure she knew from experience what he wrote: “Lord, You have all authority in heaven and on earth. I submit my life to Your authority. Fill my mind with clear convictions that You are in charge of my life and those about whom I am concerned. I surrender myself and them to You.”

 

Ogilvie continued, “Now Lord, may this commitment result in a new, positive attitude that exudes joy and hope about what You are going to do today and in the future. I leave the results completely in Your hands.” (Quiet Moments With God)

 

And so it was that a year before Dave and I left for Africa, I received a gift from my mother—a very precious gift indeed. (See photo below. Don’t miss it! But get a Kleenex first.)

 

It was a frame containing 1 Samuel 1:27, 28, beautifully lettered: “For this child I prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition which I asked of Him—So I have dedicated her to the Lord; as long as she lives, she is dedicated to the Lord. . . .”

 

Taped to the back of the frame was a photocopy of another Lloyd Ogilvie devotional along with, and—this is the most special part of all—she wrote her promise to God and to me, in her beautiful handwriting:

 

“Today I reaffirm this promise to God and to my lovely Linda! My heart and prayers will always be with you.

 

With humility, love and gratitude,

 

Mom

June 23, 1992”

 

God bless her for that! God bless her! I know it hurt terribly, but she did the right thing.

 

And from then on, she was a huge supporter of Dave and me and of the ministries in Africa we would soon begin.

 

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.

 

 

Our entangling, conflicting loyalties

“I am Yours, God. Take me and use me.”

 

“I’ll live my life for You. I’ll do anything You ask.”

 

“I love You more than anything else.”

 

“All I am and all I have—Lord I give them all to You.”

 

You and I sing words like those, and sometimes pray them, but do we really mean them?

 

Jesus taught, in Luke 9, that when we say we’ll follow Him, we must first count the cost.

 

He resolutely set out for Jerusalem and, on the way, met three men.

 

“The three different levels of commitment represented in people He met along the way,” writes Lloyd John Ogilvie, “expose the ways many Christians relate to their discipleship today.” (God’s Best for My Life)

 

Man #1 promised he’d follow Jesus wherever He went. Ogilvie says the man “made a grand, pious commitment that went no deeper than words.”

 

In reply, Jesus challenged him, as if to ask, “Oh, really?” He no doubt recognized the man’s emotional enthusiasm and naiveté, so He pointed out that He didn’t have a home—not even a place to lay His head. It was as if Jesus asked, “Are you sure you want to live that way?”

 

Jesus said that because those who follow Him must live in sacrificial ways, they need to count the cost—realistically.

 

When Jesus invited Man #2 to follow as a disciple, the man said that first he wanted to bury his father.

 

Some Bible scholars suggest the man’s father might have still been alive; if so, he could’ve waited years before setting out to follow Jesus. Others surmise the man’s father had only recently died.

 

Either way, no doubt Jesus recognized the man’s commendable commitment to his family but cautioned him to recognize his priorities. He had what Ogilvie calls “a secondary loyalty” that “kept him tied to his past.”

 

Ogilvie writes, “In substance, Christ said, ‘Forget the past; follow Me!’ We dare not misinterpret His words to suggest a lack of concern for life’s obligations, but rather a call to be concerned about His call to live rather than worry about what is dead and past.”

 

Man #3 agreed to be a disciple but first, he wanted to say goodbye to his family. Ogilvie calls him a man with “competing loyalties.” We’re to seek and serve God first. We must count the cost of doing so.

 

Discipleship involves extreme demands. Clear priorities. Radical commitment.

 

In Luke 14:27-28, Jesus said, “You cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me. But don’t begin until you count the cost” (NLT).

 

Little did I know then, before going to Africa, that I would 

meet numerous colleagues who counted the cost realistically, 

people who followed God to extremely demanding locales and tasks, 

people who held on through thick and thin.

 

And they did it without complaining!

 

That’s clear priorities. That’s radical commitment.

 

Jesus knew human nature so well—He said, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow,” in other words, whoever gets started as a disciple, “and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62 NLT).

 

Conflicting loyalties, commitments, and obligations pull many of us in directions away from where God longs for us to go.

 

“We have one hand on the plow of discipleship,” Ogilvie writes, “and the other reaching back to the past or to lesser commitments. In what ways are you looking back?”

 

“What entangling loyalties,” he asks, “. . . make it difficult to give your whole mind and heart and will to Christ?”

 

That was the question I had to wrestle with before I was willing to relocate to Africa.

 

God was asking me to let go of my kids and place them in His hands,

and then asking me to die to the dreams and plans I had

as mother to my kids

and grandmother to their kids.

 

What He was asking of me left me stunned, broken.