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.

 

 

Assuming our love for God is ENOUGH and our grip on family and dreams is loose ENOUGH

We North Americans build our lives around our homes, possessions, spouses, children, friends, careers, income, health insurance, retirement plans, bank accounts, investments, dreams, and plans for the future. 

We call it pursuing “The American Dream.” 

If someone or something threatens our pursuit, we get mad, fall apart, feel victimized, cry “Unfair!” and feel cheated out of our rights. 

God asks us, however, to hold them loosely, and for good reason—so that He can occupy first place in our lives. 

Both the Old Testament and New Testament tell us: 

“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, Deuteronomy 6:4-5). 

The Message puts it this way: “Love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.” 

Usually, we estimate that our love for God is enough and that our grip on loved ones, treasures, and dreams is loose enough. 

But because God’s ways and thoughts are so different 

and so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9), 

sometimes He whispers, “Your grip is still too tight.” 

God isn’t mean-spirited. No, the point is this: He has something better for us, something that would leave us utterly amazed, things we wouldn’t believe even if we were told (Habakkuk 1:5).

But God lets us decide 

whether we want His something better. 

Sometimes, to help us decide, God puts us to the test, for both His sake and ours. Our decisions reveal to God—and to us, if we’re willing—the status of our faith in, and commitment to, Him. 

God put many of our heroes and mentors to the test, including our dear Old Testament role model, Abraham.  

God asked him to do the incomprehensible—unthinkable—unimaginable: He asked Abraham to place his beloved son, Isaac, on an altar and sacrifice him as a burnt offering (Genesis 22:1-2).  

Do you think Abraham staggered at the request? I do. 

Abraham played a key role in my eventual willingness to leave my very-young adult children and move to Africa, but let me hasten to make this clear: Unlike God’s request of Abraham, God wasn’t asking me to put my children to death. 

It took a while to figure out what God was asking of me and my kids, but here’s what I slowly began to understand: 

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. 

And yes, I staggered at God’s request. 

Back then, before I began to see more clearly what God was up to, He and I were in a monumental battle of the wills. He was pointing me toward Africa, but I was digging in my heels. 

In most situations, I wouldn’t have put up such a fight, but when it came to what was best for my kids—well, that was a different story. 

I felt no peace—none!—about leaving them. I just couldn’t shake the belief that they needed their parents to help them transition out of college and into adulthood. 

Those were dark days: It felt like God was asking me to walk away from my kids before I had finished the job He had given me: to raise them—and raise them well. 

Everything within me cried out that it wasn’t right! 

At the same time, I was not at peace about stomping my foot and saying “No!” to God. 

I needed to reorient my thinking, to recognize that God was offering me His something better. 

In coming weeks we’ll ponder what God asked Abraham to do, and why, but for now, what about you? 

Is God asking you to do something incomprehensible, unthinkable, unimaginable?  

Are you staggering from the enormity of it all? 

Could it be that He is asking you to give up to Him your best so He can give you His better? Something that will leave you utterly amazed, things you wouldn’t believe even if you were told? (Habakkuk 1:5)

Lessons learned from being “preoccupied with control”

We had invaded territory belonging to lions and leopards and cape buffaloes. The land belonged to them and we had to play by their rules.

In the middle of nowhere in Kenya, Dave and I and about forty other newcomers had just begun our six-week stay in part two of our orientation course, preparing to live and work in Africa. All of us trainees had pitched our tents and a couple of the guys had dug a hole in the ground for our latrine.

The sun would soon set—it always sets around 6 p.m. on the equator—and we had to hurry to get oriented and settled because it wasn’t safe for us to walk around after dark. The animals reigned over a vast swath of earth after nightfall.

The orientation staff handed out plastic containers about the size and shape of a coffee can. “This is your loo,” Jenny said, “your chamber pot. Use it in your tent during the night and, in the morning, empty it and clean it.”

The ramifications of being confined to our tents at night rubbed us the wrong way. Using a chamber pot?!? You’ve gotta be kidding!

We understood the rationale, and even agreed with it—who wants to tangle with a lion or leopard?—but we were taken aback when confronted with our need to change our way of doing things.

Dave and I didn’t have a vehicle. None of the other trainees had a vehicle, either. Only the directors of our orientation, Brian and Jenny, had one, a Toyota Land Cruiser. But the place didn’t have any roads and Dave and I couldn’t have found our way back to civilization even if we did have a car. Life felt a bit out of control.

We Americans are accustomed to having control over much of our lives, day by day, hour by hour. We’ve lived lives with abundant personal freedoms, making our own plans, and expecting to have fun. As a result, when we have constrictions imposed upon us, it’s a shock. We protest anything that interferes with the control we’ve always wielded.

That’s why, during our current coronavirus pandemic, we chafe under our restricted movements. We mutter and complain about following rules imposed upon us. Staying home is an irritation. We grumble about missing birthday parties and Easter church services. We’re annoyed that beaches and parks are closed. And some of us are really grumpy about missing basketball and baseball seasons.

And, just like during our orientation course, we understand the rationale, and even agree with it—who wants to come down with the coronavirus?—but we’ve suddenly had to adjust our way of doing things and to re-shape our expectations. We’ve had to give up control and surrender it to something bigger than ourselves.

We experience that in our spiritual lives, too. We’re trained, by both our culture and our churches, that our lives are our own and we get to make plans, set the rules, choose the fun and when to have it. Yes, even our churches too often give us the message that we humans are in control, the masters of our own fate.  

But wait. God’s best for us doesn’t look like that. The Bible says that all things—that includes you and I—were created through Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16).

And both the Old and New Testaments teach us that our primary focus, the most important commandment given to us, is this: “Love the Lord your God with  all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5, Mark 12:30).

That means we give God priority. We give Him control. He calls the shots. We surrender to Someone bigger than ourselves.

Henri Nouwen wrote about “an enormously radical attitude toward life.”

He said such a life “is trusting that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings.

“It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. . . .

“The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present in the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction.

“That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.” (The Path of Waiting, Henri Nouwen)

Yes, our world, and our individual and collective lives are preoccupied with control.

Looking back now, I recognize that in being confined to our tent at night in the wilds of Kenya, and in having neither a vehicle nor roads, God was offering us a lesson, a learning opportunity: Experiencing new circumstances in which we must give up control can teach us how, on a deeper level, to give up appropriate control to God.

And I see now that in the restrictions placed upon us during the coronavirus pandemic, God is offering us another learning opportunity: Experiencing this unfamiliar stay-at-home lifestyle and letting go of many things we used to control can teach us how, on a deeper level, to give up appropriate control to God.

That’s what Nouwen meant when he wrote of

“a very radical stance toward life

in a world preoccupied with control.”

That’s what he meant about

“giving up control over our future

and letting God define our life.”

God offers us ways to practice

surrendering to something bigger than ourselves—

surrendering to Him.

Each lesson we learn offers us opportunities

to give more and more control to Him,

trusting Him and loving Him with all our hearts,

souls, minds, and strength.

(Mark 12:30)