Illuminate

I walked smack into the middle of a crossroads this week.

I didn't see it coming.

My path had been nice and straight for a few years...diapering babies and chasing toddlers a reliable companion. Somehow as the babies became toddlers and the toddlers became children, more babies came. When the babies stopped coming, it didn't seem to alter my path, because God expanded our family through adoption and guardianship. (Thank you, Lord.)

And yet this week new roads appeared: branching to the left, veering to the right.

My beloved Precept Upon Precept teacher is unable to teach this fall. Guess who "happens" to be taking the leadership training next month? The same person who feels completely inadequate when she thinks of possibly leading an amazing group of women who have more wisdom in their little fingers than she has in her entire body. Yep, that would be me. Do I step forward?

My daughter needs a Christian school to go to in 2011. She needs a seventh grade teacher, and she needs to attend class in our town. The Christian school where my other children attend, the school where I taught for four years, does not currently have a seventh grade teacher. I have felt God calling me back to teaching, but when?

Out of nowhere, I was asked to consider applying for a part time position working with children. The job description fits my passions and for some reason they felt led to personally invite me to apply, but is that what God wants for me?

Then there is my straight forward road. The road that sees me raising my youngest children to school age and then ministering to them and to my home by being available and unencumbered by the responsibilities of a job. I know that God calls me to be the best mother and wife I can be. I know that if I stay on this path I will have no regrets. But, will I miss something God is calling me to do?

Crossroads. We all reach them. Sometimes the decision is life altering, like walking away from earthly possessions and going into a life of ministry. Sometimes they just take us through an unexpected detour and we come out on the other side blessed by our obedience.

"In the natural" as my friend Rebecca says, I want to start making lists of pros and cons and ifs and buts and whens and wherefores. I want to plow ahead and ask questions and secure decisions.

But life is not about what I want. Life is not about my plans. I've lived that life, the one where I trudge forward by myself, putting God on a shelf in my mind so I can take Him down and dust Him off when I am done being so busy. I don't want to do that anymore.

I learned a valuable lesson in my Precept class in January. One of the ladies was talking about the verse, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." (Psalm 119:105) She reminded us that in old times there were no street lights or flashlights to guide people as they walked. Instead, they carried a small lantern that illuminated only the step right in front of them. Truly, that's all they needed...as long as they knew the ground was sure before them, they could take the next step in confidence.

The verse tells us that God's word is our lamp and light. It doesn't promise that God is going to reveal the next five hundred steps, but only the next one. He promises that if we are in Him, He will guide [us] in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. (Psalm 23:3)

This knowledge definitely takes the anxiety out of our crossroads. The truth is, the best thing we can do is pray. We need to pray that He will show us the path He wants us to take. We need to make sure that we don't make big life decisions based on selfish desires or motivations. Sometimes we have to step out in faith, knowing that He will not let us fall. This might mean taking a different path, or it might mean staying on the one we're on.

I don't know what the answers are going to be, and I'm okay with that. I'm just putting one foot in front of the other and watching for the path that God has for me. Because wherever that road takes me, He's going to work it out for good.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jer. 29:11)

Emotional Hunger

So I am dieting, again.

Yeah, I know.

It's a radical diet. I'll spare you the details, but it basically entails one real meal of protein and vegetables a day, and protein/fiber bars and shakes for the rest of the day. It's all supervised by a clinic, so it's safe, but it's definitely radical.

But even though I may be running the same road I've run before; the "I'm never going to fail again" road that for thirteen years has taken the "oh just this one little cheat and I'll go right back to it" detour, this time something is different.

The diet is definitely doing what it promised in that I'm truly not physically hungry. My stomach doesn't rumble, I don't feel lightheaded or faint. But I'm finding that wasn't the root of my problem in the first place.

Because even though I'm not physically hungry, I'm emotionally hungry. I miss food. Well, I miss my comfort food. I miss chocolate and bread, I miss french fries and spinach dip.

When I'm bored, stressed, angry, and sad...that's when I miss them. When I'm lonely (hard to believe with eight kids!) or in a hurry, when I'm tired or wanting a "pick me up", I long for them.

Never before have I craved those foods without physical hunger. It has really shown me how much I relied on them in my times of trouble, and it has proven to me that my life-issues troubleshooting is pretty messed up.

God doesn't tell us to turn to food when we need solace. He didn't provide food so that we could temporarily satiate our emotional problems. Matthew 11:28 says, "Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Food is a quick fix that doesn't last. We throw ourselves into a sugar high that feels really good until we come crashing down lower than we were in the first place. We end up riding that roller coaster all day long once we climb aboard. It isn't the answer.

God is the answer. He isn't temporary. "Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal." (Isaiah 26:4) Yesterday, today, and for every tomorrow, God will be there for us. There isn't one problem we have that He doesn't care about.

We need to go to Him. When we feel that overwhelming need to eat something sweet, we need to ask ourselves why. If we aren't physically hungry, we need to fill our emotional hunger by turning to Him.

Steve went to Mexico on a mission trip a couple weeks ago. He didn't want to leave me with all the kids, but I really wanted him to go, so he went. The six days he was gone, even though I wasn't dieting yet, I consumed no sugar. Why? I told my friends that I wanted to watch eight kids for six days and in the end be able to say that I did it on Christ alone. Not because I stocked my pantry beforehand in anticipation of the stress, but because I knew that God was going to bring me through it. And He did. Despite the fact that huge issues erupted with two of our children, I managed beautifully. He got me through it, just as He promises. I saw His hand on me so clearly as I walked more than one behavioral minefield calmly and with a clear mind. And in the end I was able to proclaim that not only did I do it through Him alone, but I did it so much better than I had even imagined.

It doesn't mean we have to go sugar-free. Let's just pledge to leave the sweet stuff for what it's meant to be instead of giving it the role God should have in our lives.

I know we'll find that life is so much better.

The Story of James

Days have passed again.

I've gotten to the point where I am finger-typing blog ideas into my yellow lined-paper iPod Touch notebook app, desperate to keep a hint of my experiences with God in the midst of what has been a chaotic month.

I hate it. I hate it when I allow life to overshadow the One who gave me this life. And so it is that even as the three loads of freshly-washed-and-needing-a-home laundry sit piled behind me, I am choosing to break my blogging silence. I wish it was the fact that I finally slowed down that made me realize that it had been too long since I had written, but the truth is that I was going at 90 miles an hour through my house when the deciding thought struck me.

I didn't write about James.

I wrote about Kahlan, Joseph, and Aimee. I wrote about my three girls who as of April 16th I can legally claim as mine. (That's one of the notes scrawled on my fake paper, "blog entry on adoption....")

But I didn't write about James.

My baby who completed us. My little boy whose very existence is a testament to why we must listen for God's voice.

And so I had to stop everything. I put my two daughters that I am homeschooling (another future entry) and little Aimee down with a cartoon. The little boy whose face flitted across my craziness was sleeping soundly, wrapped in blankets and clutching his favorite stuffed pig.

His story is simple. It isn't about abortion, or autism, or infertility, like the other three I carried within me. His story is purely a lesson about listening to God.

James' story starts long before he was conceived, more than a year before, in fact. It began in a booth at Dana's Restaurant, where Steve and I had stopped for lunch. Aimee, just a tiny baby at the time, slept soundly in her carseat as we talked.

Though the day and the restaurant were random, the purpose was not. We knew we needed to talk, and we knew what we needed to talk about. The time had come to decide if we were ready to take what might be one of the biggest steps in child-bearing: the vasectomy.

Those of you who have read Aimee's story know that after years of infertility, we'd come to the place where we were more than content with our family size. Then Aimee was born, a gift from God, and between our three children and the three foster children we had in our home at the time, our life was full.

So the decision should have been easy. My husband was ready for the vasectomy...he'd been willing to do it after our first child. We'd always dreamed of a large family, but in our dreams the family grew mainly by adoption. Increasing our family size delayed the adoption dreams (we thought at the time), and we were so happy with our two daughters and our son.

But, me, I felt uneasy. I couldn't put my finger on it at first. We discussed it that day, rational and irrational, pros and cons, facts and feelings. Everything pointed to the vasectomy being the wisest and best choice. But, when I prayed, I truly felt God telling me to wait. Not that He would give me another child, but that I needed to wait.

I truly wasn't too concerned. Steve and I didn't use birth control anyway because of my fertility issues. Aimee was a chance in a million if you wanted to look at worldly statistics. So the months passed quickly, and even though my mind didn't change, I still felt that strong feeling when I prayed. I was supposed to wait.

I can't go into the whole story here, but during the summer of 2007 Steve and I hit a bit of a rough patch. For the first time in our marriage, we were having a hard time communicating. We both at times felt angry and separate. We'd been together for ten years at that point, and we weren't used to being at odds. It was a difficult season.

In August, we had a breakthrough. Actually, I had a breakthrough. It was my stubborn pride that kept us from the fullness of marriage that we had always had. I had to get on my knees before God and ask forgiveness for letting my desire to "win" arguments soar well above who I knew His Word called me to be. In humbling myself before Him, and apologizing to my amazing husband, I felt joy that had been absent from my heart that entire summer. Joy and peace.

Six days later, even before I took the test, I knew. The pregnancy test just confirmed it; I was pregnant.

God knew I was supposed to have that baby. He knew that my son was growing within me when I tearfully gave my life back to Him, and He knew what James would forever represent to me.

I don't think vasectomies are wrong. In fact, Steve did get one after James was born. The answer to our prayers was very different that time, and we felt complete peace with our decision. But it would have been wrong for us to go ahead when God was so clearly leading me to wait. And looking at my son eight months later, I knew exactly why.

My now two year old little boy is a testament to saying Yes to God. He is a testament to the power of reconciliation, and his life right now represents the power of God's hand on marriage. I may have been pregnant already when I put my priorities back in order that day so long ago, but who knows what James' life would look like if I hadn't. Would he have been born into a marriage filled with angst and stress? Would he have his three new sisters that came into our life just four months later, or would we have turned that opportunity down in order to focus on our fractured relationship?

My son reminds me that God's power and strength is real. He is tangible evidence of the fact that God loves us intimately, and that His plan for us is the best. We just have to be willing to say Yes when He calls.

We'll never know what blessings He has for us unless we do...

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)