My Cup

Some of you know that this past month and a half in South Africa has caused a bit of confusion for me as to what my role is here. I had a lot of expectations for how I personally would be useful here. I guess I envisioned myself with Norah in the sling, going every day to the townships with Andy, tutoring, teaching, and just doing it all. But it's not quite working out that way. :) As reality sets in and we are beginning to experience more what life and ministry will actually look like here, I am realizing that those ideas for me are just not practical. I have spent a lot of time praying, talking, and processing my role. I have had so much encouragement from my mom, my mother-in-law, my sister, and friends who are mothers here about the importance of focusing on my family. I knew all this, but I had to realize it,  and put everything together that they had said and that God was saying to me.
I have finally come to see that even Jesus, the Son of God, who could have saved the entire world in an instant, focused on just what God had given Him to do. He could have healed everyone, and He could have changed every person's heart to cause them to believe, but instead He submitted to God's will - the cross. He could have saved everyone, but He focused on investing in those 12 disciples that God gave Him. And through God speaking to me through my friends and family, I have realized that this (being a wife and mommy) is my cup, and as one friend put it, I can only do "what's in my hands." I heard T.D. Jakes say that submission is when you expected a large crowd and God gives you only a few. I may have envisioned myself as working with hundreds of kids, but God has given me one right now - my baby girl. My mom told me that as I pour myself into Norah, my cup will "spill over." The night she told me that, as I put Norah to bed and recited Psalm 23 to her like I do every night, the line about "my cup runs over" leapt out in my mind. All I can do right now is drink the cup God has given me. And what a wonderful cup it is! And as I do what is in my hands to do, it will spill over to others as well.

I have talked a lot in the past about how I believe my role as a woman is to support my husband, care for my children and our home. But I am tested now to see if I really will act on that in my life. I am convicted of talking about it but not really following through. Or not really believing the importance of it.  Not really trusting that God's way for me is best in accomplishing His work.

Andy's days are quickly becoming very full with ministry work. I want to be free to be the support he needs. I want to see myself as a part of what he is doing. I don't want to be too busy and stressed out to listen to him and encourage him. He has also asked me to help him by having kids to our home to spend time with them. I will also take on more of the blogging, writing our newsletter, monitoring our schedule, and possibly other admin needs that arise. I am going to have a couple girls over today so we can bake together, and I plan to set up a regular baking/sewing day. We also plan to start having kids over more regularly for meals and game nights. I am so excited to be able to serve from our home in this way. We also plan to host (not lead) a small group in our home twice a month, so we can be a part of a Bible study and be growing together as a couple - and not have to get a babysitter! My sister and I are still pursuing starting a monthly group to support a few of the teenage moms from Africa Jam as well. And of course, my days will continue to be full with not only taking care of our home but caring for the sweetest, most energetic and fun 9 month old I know - Norah. I don't want to miss out on a second of her life. I want to be teaching her, giving her all the attention she needs, and just enjoying her. She is only little once.

I feel excited to have a renewed vision. Please pray for me to continue steadfastly in it!

Simplicity

This article from Titus2atthewell.com was definitely what I needed to hear this week! For some reason, because I have a baby I also feel that I am supposed to be an excellent baker/cook/seamstress/home decorator/ housekeeper, plus an amazing, ever-patient and supportive wife, exercise every single day, get up early every single day, look beautiful and put together every day, and on and on. This article reminded me that even though all of these things are good, I need to just be who God wants me to be today. And all those good things I want to be as a Christian women - many will come in time. But not all at once. Please read this, even if you aren't married or a mom, and read it especially if you are a woman. The author includes a prayer at the end of the article, and in it she says that, "If we are feeling driven and beaten down it is not because of You, it is likely us doing more than You expect from us..."
I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of living in self-imposed guilt. The expectations I place on myself are far more than God expects from me, yet I often set them up as a god in my life. Every night when I realize I haven't measured up, I feel guilty, stressed, and beaten down. This is not from God. This is not abiding, remaining, in His love.

Furthermore, I want to teach my daughter to be content in who God made her to be. I don't want her to be endlessly striving, comparing herself to others or to unreachable standards. I want her to be beautiful as she lives in the quiet pastures the Shepherd leads her beside - just living out the life He chose for her.

Enjoy and embrace the person God created you to be today. And just do that that He requires of you today. Don't try to be everything at once. We can't do it. That's why we need God!

Come and Join me...

I'm trying out this ten week study I found via www.Titus2AtTheWell.com, which sends me helpful emails daily about homemaking, faith, parenting, marriage, etc etc...

Should be fun, come and join me!

Weekly there will be a video (we'll see if I can keep up but I'd sure like to try) - with a question to answer on your blog. So look for my discussions/responses here!

There’s a Gospel That’s Involved Here

It’s not just so we can be happier. It’s because there’s a gospel that’s involved here. The way that we live and the way we function and the way our homes look all reflect on the gospel of Christ. - Nancy Leigh DeMoss


I have been receiving via email daily teachings through Proverbs 31 by DeMoss. The above quote comes from the teaching on verse 27, which talks about the virtuous wife watching over the ways of her household. This statement reiterates to me what God has been impressing on my heart lately, about how important our daily lives and homes are as a testimony to the gospel. Last night, Andy and I were talking to some friends, a couple who are in a serious relaltionship. Andy shared with them some principles we had learned before we got married...that although each of us felt, at the time, called in somewhat different directions ministry-wise, God did not make a mistake putting us together. I have noticed that Christian girls (I am talking especially about myself right now!) seem to fear that they may marry a man that will distract them from fulfilling the calling God has given them. I think we have a tendency to overspiritualize here...In my experience, I had long felt God had burdened and gifted me to work with children - orphans especially, in missions. Then Andy came into my life...and he was definitely from God. But I worried that I had to choose one or the other, Andy or missions. Marriage or missions. I worried about what was the more spiritual choice! And I have since talked to many other Christian girls who hold the same fears in their own relationships with their own Godly men. They worry, like I did, that they have to make a choice, and that choosing the man will somehow get them off course from Gods divine plan for them. 
Andy said to our friends last night that we had to realize in our own relationship that God knew what He was doing, He didn't make a mistake, and His putting us together was all a part of Gods callings on our lives. Now I see that this was exactly what God was doing with me and Andy. Through our marriage, God has used us to sharpen each other and to serve in ways together as a couple that we never could have apart. God didn't make mistakes in giving us each some lofty calling (as we saw it) and then distracting us (as we may have seen it) by giving us each other. No, God was working every detail together for His glory. Even as He still is. 
This brings me to the other side of this conversation. Andy told our friends last night that God values marriage even over missions. This can be a difficult topic...but I am beginning to see the truth in this. I think it is our definition of missions, also, that brings light to this statement. We tend to hold to a connotation of missions that it implies sacrificing all and going overseas to bring the gospel. Which I believe strongly that it often is. Andy and I are very missions-minded in this sense, and God has united our hearts in our burden for overseas (as well as local) missions. God has worked in both our hearts the dream to serve Him in overseas, full-time ministry in the future. BUT, perhaps in the Church today we have partaken in a mindset that a calling to missions is a lofty, mystical, definite call that some people receive. It refers to some point in the future when we get to a certain destination. But in reality, perhaps Gods calling on all of His people to be missionaries is so much more than this. Perhaps it IS in fact more united with marriage and family and daily life than we see it to be. Perhaps God wants to raise up missionaries in every Christian home showing what Gods relationship to His people is, just by the way they relate to each other in their own homes. Perhaps we think it is too simple, too natural, but perhaps God wants to work in this way. Because maybe being a godly wife, being faithful to your husband, taking care of your children, and ensuring that your home is safe and remains unbroken among a neighborhood full of broken homes, is in fact the way God wants to show the people in your community that God lives in your home. Maybe taking care of the family God gave you is not just for you, or just for them, but for the watching world - and, whats more, for His glory. 
Again, I am not saying that we should take lightly the command of God to GO into all the world and preach the gospel. This is a command taken TOO lightly by too many Christians, and it is a command I hold dear to my own heart. However, I just believe God is showing me lately that the way we do live in our homes and families is more important to His mission, His Kingdom, and His gospel than we have realized. And THAT is precisely why, I believe, family and marriage has been under such attack. Perhaps it is even why the enemy deceives women into thinking it is more spiritual to choose some great, sacrificial ministry over marriage and raising a godly family. 
DeMoss quotes an 1882 author named J.R. Miller. He sums up this thought so articulately:

There have been wives who in their zeal for Christ’s work outside have neglected Christ’s work inside their own doors. They have had eyes and hearts for human need and human sorrow in the broad fields lying far out, but neither eye nor heart for the work of love about their own feet.

The result has been that while they were doing angelic work in the lanes and streets, the angels were mourning over their neglected duties within the hallowed walls of their own homes. While they were winning a place in the hearts of the poor or the sick or the orphan, they were losing their rightful place in the hearts of their own household.

Let it be remembered that Christ’s work in the home is the first that he gives to every wife, and that no amount of consecrated activities in other spheres will atone in this world or the next for neglect or failure there (pp. 67-68).

So you see, I never had to make a choice between marriage and missions. For the truth is, they are one in the same.  

A Call to Biblical Womanhood - Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Here is an excerpt from a wonderful writing on womanhood by Nancy Leigh DeMoss:

Due to the modern feminist revolution, the value of women has come to be equated with their roles in the community and in the marketplace. Relatively little value is assigned to women’s roles in the home.

Today, no bouquets are handed out to women for being reverent and temperate or modest and chaste or gentle and quiet. Women are rarely applauded for loving their husbands and children, for keeping a well-ordered home, for caring for elderly parents, for providing hospitality, or for carrying out acts of kindness, service, and mercy. In other words, little attention is paid to the kinds of accomplishment that the Word of God says women should aspire to (1 Timothy 5:10; Titus 2:3-5).

The feminist revolution was supposed to bring women greater fulfillment and freedom. But I can’t help feeling a sense of sadness over what has been forfeited in the midst of the upheaval—namely, the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women.

It should come as no surprise that the secular world is confused about the calling of women. What I find more distressing is the extent to which feminism has taken hold within the evangelical world.

The Feminist Revolution Comes to the Church

As prominent Christian speakers, authors, and leaders promote an agenda that encourages women to define their worth in the workplace, in society, or at church, we see modern feminism at work within evangelicalism. These same leaders minimize women’s roles in the home as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. They don’t seem to see women as bearers and nurturers of life, as caregivers, as those privileged to shape the character of the next generation.

We see the fruit of this revolution in women who are sinking in a quagmire of divorce and remarriage and wayward children. We see it in women who are exhausted from trying to juggle the demands of one or more jobs, function as single parents, and remain active at church. We see it in women who are disoriented and confused, who lack a sense of purpose for their lives, and who are perpetually shrouded in woundedness, self-doubt, resentment, and guilt.

Yes, the feminist revolution has come to the church. And when I add up all the gains and losses, there is no question in my mind that women have been the losers.

As have their husbands and their children and grandchildren. As has the church. As has our lost, unbelieving culture.