Just like that and summer comes to a close.
Arriving on time, autumn slips through the screen door right around Labor Day weekend.
And all those endless sundrenched days of July and August strung like daisies seem to end in a blurry blinding bright spot in my memory.
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” {Hebrews 11:1}
So fear could be the “insecurity of what we worry about and the terror of what we do not see.”
“Do not fear” is God’s phrase for reminding us that he can see every possibility and he’s got it. Faith is a viable option.
We held a small memorial for a little creature whose ability to receive love taught us all a big lesson: to love is to name is to care is to keep. It is to mourn and to cry, too; and it is to continue to create and care about the living and the dying and the not-yet-born.
One does not need to do anything remarkable to be an object of love. One only needs to be that which it is – cat, boy, mom, dad, human, alive.
You are happiest here. You are happy, you are blessed, you are in your sweet spot when you are spent, exhausted, empty-handed, alone. Because then you can be happiest hungering for God’s truth, caring for others, having your soul roto-rootered, cleaned out and cleaned up, reordered and reorganized. Because then you can model cooperation and acceptance, you can become confident that there is ALWAYS a place for you at God’s table and in his family.
The point is, parents, we have to realize that we have less and less to do with their holiness when we want Jesus to become more and more important to them. We have to trust God as our kids learn the unforced rhythms of grace because it isn’t a free-pass from anything that hurts them. They will be tested and bested, bedraggled and beat up. This grace school is a school of hard knocks.
Isn’t learning to walk yoked with Jesus the most amazing thing I’ve discovered yet in my own life?
And don’t I want more than anything for my kids to choose this full-abundant-scary-good-life?
