YOU JUST NEVER KNOW WHAT HE IS UP TO!
Winter in Amarillo, Texas.
This cold, icey day reminds me of when we lived in a foreign country---Amarillo, Texas! I had heard of this far away place before, but didn't know that it actually was a part of Texas. It might well of been across the ocean, as far as I was concerned. But that is exactly where my husband moved us and this was to be our new home.
We were all of 20 and 22 years old when we pulled into that far away place, with all of our possessions packed tightly into a U-Haul truck and a 2 1/2 month old baby boy in arms. It was midnight and freezing cold, and we had begun our journey to the unknown at 5 am that morning. We rented a motel room, leaving our one car and one rented U-Haul in the parking lot. The next morning, eager to get out and try to find a place to live (that's right--we had no place to live yet), you can imagine our shock when we stepped outside to find the parking lot and our vehicles covered in a thick, twinkling blanket of snow! I thought I surely was in the twilight zone. We left Texas(remember, I had only recently learned where Amarillo is) in rainy, muggy, January Texas weather, and woke up to the North Pole, knowing NO ONE and having NOWHERE TO LIVE! Upset? Who? ME? You bet I was!
You may be wondering what in the world this has to do with growing kids. You see, what I thought was one of the worst things that had happened in my life turned out to be one of the things that God used to help me find my way to Him. He used it for so much good in both our lives. It was a major but hard stop on the journey of life that grew me up tremendously and rocked my world so hard that it caused me to search and search for Him. (More of this is described in the ABOUT ME section of the blog). That is the message I want to send to you today, that no matter what the tough times are that you will go through with your kids, hold on and look up, because God can take the darkest and hardest of times and bring greatness out of them. With all of our kids, I can look over their lives and see where He has had His hand in and on every hard and yucky place they were in. That is how all of life is when you belong to Him and live for Him. He will do what He promises to do. "And we know that God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are the called, according to His purpose." Romans 8:28. He doesn't say everything is good that happens, but He will work good out of it when we love Him. The best place to be is on your knees praying and trusting Him to do His work.
In our family, He took a heavy drinking, drug-taking, wild young man who was brought up in church by parents who loved and cherished him, and He turned him around like a spinning top, right into His loving and forgiving arms. He used him as a youth pastor for 11 years, this one who could understand what kids struggle with, because he was one of them at one time. And now He is using him as pastor of a church body, again using the tough experiences of his life to help point others to the One who pulled him up out of the miry clay. He worked ugly stuff into being used for good! By the way, he is the same 2 1/2 month old that made the journey to the unknown, Amarillo, with his daddy and me.
There are many more stories with our other kids and in our lives in which God worked good out of bad. None of them were solved by anything we did. There is no formula for raising kids who love and serve Him. The best and most powerful tools we have is to pray for them and love them and live authentic lives that point them to Him.
Just as this cold, icey weather will turn to beautiful, sunny days, so will the hard, dark things that concern us, if we trust Him with them and look to Him for help and guidance.
No comments:
Post a Comment