1 Mother 2 Another

There’s a parable in the Bible about
a rich man heading out of town, leaving his estate in the care of
three servants. To one servant he gives a small amount of money, to
another a medium stake, and to another a small fortune. When he
returns, the two servants who’d been given at least a modicum
of cash had taken their portions and exponentially increased them;
but the servant with the least had buried his cash in the back
yard, afraid of losing it. The rich guy, not surprisingly, was
displeased and took the small amount away from the poor guy and
gave it to the servant who’d been given a huge amount in the
first place, as a reward for being such a good steward of his
property.


When Maddie was born and I held her in my arms, I looked at the
fortune God had just placed in my hands, and vowed to be a good
steward with His property.

I talk about this a lot – being
conscious of my stewardship of the girls’ lives. I strive to
serve Him in how I raise them, and am acutely conscious of the
wealth beyond rubies he’s entrusted me with. So when things
start to go wrong for them, I have a couple of very predictable
responses.


Take Maddie, for example: she’s having a bit of a rough time
with some social aspects of school, and my heart breaks to see the
burden she’s under, the grief she carries with it. And like
clockwork, my thoughts are as follows:


1. What have I done wrong? As in, in what way did I mislead her or
teach her poorly on something? What wrong example did I set?

2. What have I not done that I should have? That is to say, what
tenant did I fail to teach her; what example did I fail to set?
Where did I let her down?


In other words: how did I fail you, God, with this precious child?
And what can I do to fix it?


I have been struggling with this all week with poor Maddie. I have
been praying for hours each day, praying for wisdom and guidance as
to how I can fix this for her. I hate to see my child suffer and
wish I could rush in and fix it. I know I cannot –
she’s far too old for that, and needs to work her way out of
this herself. But if I had only – SOMETHING – sooner,
or had not – SOMETHING – before, then she’d have
been shepherded better and would not have found herself here.


This must be because of some fault in me as a mother.


I would still be stuck in this rut right now if I did not have
beautiful girlfriends like my friend Heather to speak the Truth
into my life, but she did over a cup of coffee yesterday, and boy
have I had a point-of-view change.


There’s a popular image in many parents’ minds of their
child being a seed, a tiny piece of potential to be watered and
fertilized and sheltered and pruned and nurtured into full blossom.
And we picture ourselves as the gardener, tending our precious
seed, watering it, feeding it, sheltering it, pruning and nurturing
on into adulthood. And this image is accurate – and yet wrong
as well.


Our children are indeed seeds that do need everything mentioned
above. But we are not the head gardeners; God is.


As my friend reminded me yesterday, God is in complete control of
my kids’ lives. He’s got a plan, and He can carry it
out without absolutely any help from me at all. In language I can
understand, that means that there’s absolutely nothing I can
do to screw them up so bad that He finds the situation – or
them – irredeemable. And do you know something? For the
type-A personality that I am, so worried about doing It perfectly,
that’s incredibly comforting to me. I am not the gardener
lovingly standing above my little sprout, sprinkling water on my
precious plant and every now and then handing my watering can up to
God for Him to graciously refill for me. Just think about these
words from Isaiah:


“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not
return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and
flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the
eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not
return empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the
purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)


Do you see that? God is the rain, here, people. I am not the
rainmaker – God is. God’s word – and Jesus is the
Word made flesh - rains down, and at best I’m the
bottom-of-the-ladder gardener’s assistant who does the best
she can with her tiny little fraction-of-a-gardening job. So what
is my job?


I am absolutely still the steward in charge of a fortune; God has
picked ME as the Absolute Right Person to raise these girls, and I
will do it to the best of my ability, giving them a living faith
and raising them as wisely as I can. But the biggest thing God asks
of me is to pray. And don’t look here for an explanation of
prayer and why it works: I’m still not entirely sure of the
mechanics of it, only that the Bible tells us to pray without
ceasing, interceding for others and lifting up our petitions. All I
can do is pray – a LOT – and pray that God’s will
is done through my girls. That they grow up to be the girls He has
called them to be. God’s the only one who can change a
child’s heart: I can give them scripture verses and model
good behavior and get it into their brains, but the heart change is
all up to Him.


So I’m not the rainmaker. But I’m the rain dancer,
sending up my prayers for that rain to fall on their parched
hearts. And I’ll be honest – when I set my feet on that
path, sometimes my heart is leaden and I don’t feel like
dancing. But what begins as a dance of obligation, of blind trust
and teeth-gritting obedience, always turns to joy and freedom as my
feet move and I know it’s not up to me. My prayers by their
very nature change from a laundry list of petitions and specific
requests to a simple Thanksgiving for His goodness, His plan, His
perfect will.


I set my grieving heart to praying and He turns my mourning into
dancing.


So that’s me. The rain dancer.