Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind

I tend to helicopter parent from time to time.  I want to be able to see my kids, know what they are doing, and I feel as though my eye on them is what keeps them safe.  If you are a parent, then you will understand that need.  It is an uncontrollable will that is ingrained within you.  You are unable to be settled without knowing your children are safe.

My youngest son is only a month removed from turning eight years old.  To date, I had not allowed him out of my sight, with the exception of very close friends and family.  Last night he was able to come with me to Youth Group and attend the Hallowee..... wait, um.....  Spooky party we had.  During the Spooky festivities, it forced me to allow him to go off and hang out with a lot of people that I know, but whom I do not KNOW.  I know who they are, maybe some background, and have even spoken to most of them.  But the majority I do not intimately KNOW.

This situation brought up a couple of feelings inside of me:
#1 - The inherent need that God has to keep us safe, coupled with his deep wanting for us to make our own choices.
#2 - My own contentment to go about my life with as few deep relationships as possible.

I want to address #2 first.  If you are a major rule follower, just try and get over it for a moment. I very carefully choose who I have a deep and sharing relationship with.  The more of these relationships that I attempt, the more I am either hurt or disappointed by others.  Is this my unwillingness to be let down?  Or, am I not able to trust that, once they have let me down, they will be able to recognize this and acknowledge it appropriately?  Maybe it's just laziness? What if caring for others is just too much work?  The idea that I am a selfish person also comes to mind.  I don't really want to get into all of that sometimes.  If I am really honest about it, I feel like I just don't have the guts.  An old friend of mine, Heath Hood, was someone that I allowed into the private part of myself that very few people area allowed.  When I say very few, I mean he and my wife were literally the only ones that I trusted that much to give them everything I had (good and bad).  It is now just my wife.  Heath ended up dying of a heroin overdose in a crappy motel and was left there by the other druggies who did not want to be there when the police finally showed up.  I knew he was not doing well.  I knew things were not good.  I NEVER fathomed that outcome.  Maybe that's the crux of the whole matter?  Maybe knowing that the ones we love are the ones that can surprise us with the biggest and worst surprises.  His death scarred me very deeply.  It scarred me not in the "Hey, what's that scar on your arm?" kind of way but more in the, "I don't take my shirt off so people won't see the hideous gash in my chest" kind of way.  So I fend people off, wanting to go deeper, all the while rubbing my fingers across my scar and reminding myself of how much it hurt.

As for #2?  Letting go of my son for minutes at Youth Group was nerve racking!  If I was God, I would be handing my son a book when he was born and telling him to do what it says.  I would then send him into a world that tells him that my book is a fairy tale fantasy, dreamed up by liars and cheats to create a society of docile sheep and rich, swindling pastors.  I cannot imagine what God goes through having so many children and caring so deeply about all of them.  My ability to understand the depth of His feelings is so minuscule, but He gives me a glimpse through my own son.  I can almost hear him whisper to me, "I trust you with My kids.  Take care of them".  That really is our mission isn't it?

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

"I love me some me!" - Terrell Owens

Isn't that the truth!  The longer I have been a Christian, the more I have begun to realize the constant ebb and flow associated with my own selfishness and desires.  Like a huge war for my attention, the battle wages within me with each side taking and giving back ground.  I am not some total jerk who walks around, touting myself as all high and mighty, looking down upon all the little underlings in the world.  It's a subtle, nondescript, underlying fear of losing my own importance.  As if completely thinking about others might somehow diminish my own significance in the grand scheme of things.  It all sounds so funny from the outside, but inside it is a choice that I so badly want to make.

 I firmly believe hat God will make it possible for you to do anything.  I do not believe in God snapping his fingers and changing you into someone completely different.  I believe that His Holy Spirit allows you to become who God wants you to be.  However, the bulk of the work is ours. The Red Sea did not part on it's own.  God did not come down out of the heavens and blow on the water, splitting it in two.  Moses had to raise his staff.  Noah would have died with everyone else had he not built the ark.  In fact, God did not even give him an ark, instead he was told to build it with a set of instructions.  Let's be honest, Ikea could possibly be a Christian store if you look at it through the lens of the story of Noah.  Both stories are usually told as stories of faith and the huge things God can do in our lives.  I always have felt as though they are a story of how God works in our lives, through our willingness to be changed and transformed from everyone else to people of true change for God.

And so, I have been struggling with God telling me that I need to stop worrying about me and get to His work of worrying about others.  Not, He did not shine down rays of sunshine, burn a bush, or even come as a booming voice in my ear.  Instead he uses the Holy Spirit to unsettle me, stir my emotions, and give me the feeling that I am not where I should be with this.  We all have that experience, don't we?  "I should do something about that", your spirit says to you "it should not happen."  So that's where I am today.  I am being stirred to start giving more to others and let God take care of me more.  The response, moreover the result is going to be up to me.  He has given me the ability but I cannot expect Him to change it for me.