Something and Someone

I am doing a Beth Moore Bible Study. It is the fourth one I have done. She is an incredible Bible teacher. This one is a study of Esther. It is challenging and provoking and has me examining my life--my purpose, my destiny.

I am also reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan with my Sunday school class. It is challenging and provoking and has me examining my life--the way I spend my time and our resources and how I obey all those red letters in the New Testament.

For a while there, I was starting to feel like my life was a tiny little bit of a thing and that I was completely missing the boat by staying home with my youngsters.

You see, according to my high school science teachers, I should be something, a doctor, or an engineer, or a scientist. And according to my college professors, I should be something, a leader among the teacher, a writer, a researcher. I've been demolishing the expectations of people for years (choosing instead of doctor, a teacher's life, and instead of teacher of the year, home with youngsters). But those expectations live on in my head, the dreams someone else had for me, and the definition of success written, no, inscribed in my head and heart by our world continue to speak to me.

I begin to believe a little too much in the words and expectations of others. I begin to question this path of submission to Creator and to husband that I am on, this rockiest of roads called motherhood and the anonymity of stay-at-home mom.

Then He speaks quietly in rocking a boy to sleep. I breathe in the smell of his head and I wonder at this little fellow given to me for such a short time. I am reminded that in caring, serving, loving this one, I am caring for the poor (for a babe born even into the wealthiest of families is utterly poor and completely dependent). When I stoop to tie shoes for a little girl still learning, I am meeting the needs of the lowly. When I forgive, bearing the consequences of another's wrongdoing, I am giving mercy.

I find that I am something--the only mother these two will ever have, a picture of the humility of Christ in a world of ego and pride (if I'm doing it well which I often do not).

And He speaks quietly in story. John and Charles Wesley had a faithful, prayerful mother. John Newton had a faithful and prayerful mother. John and Charles were great men of faith who are credited with founding Methodism and writing countless hymns. John Newton was a sailor for the slave trade, who later repented, became ordained in the Church of England, worked for the abolition of English slavery and wrote a number of hymns including Amazing Grace. I am reminded that faithful, loving, prayerful mothers can make for great spiritual leaders. That though the life of a mother of two in Uniontown may not seem like a big life filled with destiny, it is a purposeful, useful life filled with destiny.

Through the struggle and the sitting quietly at His feet, I am told that I am not merely something. He tells me I am someone. And it is in being someone that my destiny will be fulfilled.

I am still walking through Esther and Crazy Love and I am sure that some of what I am feeling is very much conviction, and I think it is appropriate to struggle with the red letters and the problem of poverty and want and need. But I am encouraged to think that this life isn't as little as those memories sometimes make me feel. And isn't is always a fun thing when you realize that your feelings aren't the truth.