Several years ago, when my kids were quite young, I came up with this idea that in order to help grow the gifts and abilities God had given me, I would move to Chicago and take on some college courses. So what if I had a six month old, a three year old and a five year old and a husband. So what if I was homeschooling, I could do both. So what if it meant uprooting my family and transferring them to a brand new city away from helping friends and family and my husband’s job. In my mind it was a bright and shiny idea and felt way more significant, important and godly than what I was doing right then and there which was changing diapers and making supper.
Fortunately for me, my small group asked me to reconsider. They gave me the wise advice that this might not be the best decision for this stage of my life. There would be other times in my life that I would be able to pursue college courses but now was not the time, my little ones (as well as my husband) needed me.
The Bible said that my priorities were as a wife and a mother. But trying to decide what to make the family for supper doesn’t seem like spiritual work, which was the kind of work I admired. Frankly, I still hate figuring out what’s for supper. It is compounded with my ability to only make meals that my family hates – or at least three out of four of them hate.
It makes me laugh to think that I had come up with this scheme of college just to get out of making meals! Really, that’s what I think I did! You see, I have the sweetest husband in the world. He supported me in this college idea and was even excited to see where God might lead us. I did not consciously think about what it would be like to try to make supper and get homework done at the same time (totally ignoring the fact that there were the kids still there to mother). But I would have had the perfect excuse to say, “Honey, I can’t make supper, I have this project. Will you take care of it?” And he would have.
Although thinking up what to have for supper had a bit to do with my desire for college, there were other things in play. I think I can safely say that most people have had the feeling that what they do or who they are isn’t good enough. Are the words “If only” familiar to you? If only someone would date me, if only we could get pregnant, if only I had taken different courses in college, if only my mother/father had been a better at parenting, if only we had a supportive family, if only we had more money . . .
There have been times when I have felt good and sorry for myself. But by God’s grace I have gotten beyond that. Somehow God has reached out to me and made me more aware of His control over every situation in my life, and that His control was good. He has shrunk this pain down to where I could see the positive side. I think that every Christian longs inside to be complete, to be holy, to have the work of Christ complete within them. This is where it started, this is what I wanted, but in my sin and my selfish pride, I tried to step ahead of God and help Him along with my life.
Elizabeth Elliot wrote,"When giving advice to a young woman who was in my shoes on how she could learn to love the Lord, grow in grace, and be truly holy in the midst of general chaos she said these words: “ It is tempting to imagine that, given a different lot in life, circumstances other than those in which we find ourselves, we would make much greater strides in holiness. The truth is that the place where we are is God’s schoolroom, not somewhere else. It takes adversity of one form or another. (Philippians 1:9) This dear woman had not thought of the word “suffering”. To her is was just the awful “dailyness of husband and children, the same dishes and clothes to be washed, the house to be cleaned a thousand times, the monotonous repetition of “Do this,” “Don’t’ do that,” the sheer unmanageability of it all.”
“God is simply asking you to be what you are.””
The place where we are is God’s schoolroom, no where else. To learn to accept that with humble gratitude rather than anything from discontent, distractedness to all out anger is something I continue to work on . . . while I figure out what’s for dinner.
The place where we are is God’s schoolroom, no where else.