In a mix of mostly strangers at a party. I began to share of our special needs life. Testimonies of God’s great faithfulness. My enthusiasm was slightly trumped by a woman who works in a “system” I shall call it, for children just like my son. A world system we knew is exactly where he did not belong. Offering her expertise and even a home visit I knew then we were absolutely two worlds apart. She would hear nothing no matter how much I testified. I felt sad and yes the enemy placed a slight stamp of defeat over me ever so temporary. She does not know my son, but even more realized she did not know me. And quite possible she did not know my Savior. She does not know the radical life we have chosen. Radical motherhood. I have decided to follow Jesus.
I felt like such a stranger and I was standing in a foreign country. Speaking my language and yet she was not able to interpret. My heart was crying out inside, wanting to say, but didn’t… ” Don’t you want to hear about all the blessings and beauty and magnitude of the work of the Lord? Don’t you want to hear of how this loving Savior Who created moms and dads for their children can equip them with His power (His power that works in us – Eph. 3:20), through faith, and trust and obedience. The miracles to the benefit of the parents lives, the children’s lives, and beyond? Oh and now…you are sharing your story. The crowded classrooms. Not enough help. Children are not getting needs met. Why can’t you hear? Why can’t you see? And yet you think you have something to offer me, but I want to say I have something to offer this broken world. God has more.
Awoke the next morning with some anxiety over the things I did share. Fear crept in for considering maybe I said more than I should have. I leaned on the wisdom of the Lord through the vessel of my husband in his reassurance… “that is when we must trust God and His covering over our lives”. And peace came.
Greeted at church hours later by a Sister I had just met a couple weeks prior. ” I cannot help but think that what you shared about your son was purposefully and intentionally orchestrated by God. Later that same week I was talking with a friend about her 9 year old son.” She went on explaining this boy who has been in the world system from the start. A mother doubting her place and abilities to be what her son needs. A boy that needs to be rescued from being made to believe something is wrong because he isn’t like all the rest. A boy described as my son, who was entering into a new phase of anger at the same age my son went through his. This Sister in Christ asked me “is it too late to pull him out now-too late to help him?”. I reassured her it was not. Sharing more of how God took us through this time in our boy’s life and has done radical work. A boy who knows LOVE and security. A boy who knows he is valuable. A boy who we know would not be, if we had not chosen to live radically in our commitment to following Jesus and against the grain of the world.
Radical for us has meant leaving a church body because God had somewhere else He wanted to take us (we just didn’t know where yet), leaving behind the opinions of man, groups that weren’t ministering to the needs God knew we all had,walking directly opposite of the professionals, pulling our son out of every social interaction that did not have the structure he needed, dying to pride, dying to approval of men and rather learning more of what it means to yearn for the approval God, and sweetly abiding in our home sweet home, abiding under the shadow of the Almighty, as our children abide more tightly and securely under our covering, under God’s covering and prayed our way through each day basking in His presence. Soaking ourselves in HIS WORD to us daily Living day after day in the great unknown and asking God to lead us being our LIGHTHOUSE!
As worship started, I promised to pray for this boy and his mom. Praying God will radically show her the significance she has beyond what she knows at this moment. Her role and call as the honored chosen instrument of LOVE ordained by God for her child.
Our family joined together under the roof of our new place of fellowship. Worshiping together side by side, arm over shoulder down through all four of us. How prevalent the songs were to my soul. As I stood in tears once again. Oh how He has been our Lighthouse. Not fearing tomorrow, each morning we rise and sing, believing in God’s love to lead us through troubled seas, His fire before us to guide us in the darkness, leading us safe to shore.
We sang:
My Lighthouse, my lighthouse
Shining in the darkness, I will follow You
My Lighthouse, my Lighthouse
I will trust the promise,
You will carry me safe to shore
I won’t fear what tomorrow brings
With each morning I’ll rise and sing
My God’s love will lead me through
You are the peace in my troubled sea
Fire before us, You’re the brightest
You will lead us through the storms
Yes, I was a foreigner the day before sharing in a foreign country. And I reflected how choosing to go and leave and move into unknowns left us as foreigners seeking out our “place”. This day I was not in a foreign place. Worshiping and speaking the same language to our Savior. ** A sister in Christ listened with consideration about the possibility that it is not too late for her friend’s son. She could hear and comprehend the truth’s I shared.
The LORD showing me two worlds. The world that is blinded to the truth of who mother’s, wive’s and children are called to be and where their divine purpose is. The world blinded to the honored place God has created for us to live in. Humbly serving as Jesus did. And then He showed me a boy, just like my son, who is lost in this world. And my heart breaks. And I pray that this mom will be able to hear this message of truth as my Sister in Christ shares with her friend.
And the next song… Beautiful words so perfect to my heart and soul we sang. Exactly my testimony, my gratitude and the TRUTH of Who God is in our life!
Your love is like radiant diamonds
Bursting inside us we cannot contain
Your love will surely come find us
Like blazing wild fires singing Your name
God of mercy sweet love of mine
I have surrendered to Your design
May this offering stretch across the skies
And these Hallelujahs be multiplied
Bursting inside with His love His love perseveres for the fullness of our hearts, and His sweet design. What design? His design! His design for family. For fathers, mothers, children. Using our son as the vessel of sweet design. Causing us to live radically different from the world’s design. When we TRULY surrender to God’s perfect design all we can do is offer praise to His beauty and majesty and holiness and offer hallelujah’s unending. As we live radically as a foreigner, HE takes our humble offerings that seem mundane and unimportant to the rest of the world and multiplies for His perfect plan and glory due His name. May I lift my hands in praise to Him in unending hallelujah’s that will never be enough worthy to our Lord, and just say, Lord multiply, multiply, multiply!!!!!
God’s perfect design. Relationship. A savior Who came radically down from heaven to radically live and die so that I might have life. Today, tomorrow and for all eternity in heaven! A Savior that is the author of relationships, family, mothers, fathers, children.. the author and creator of life. A savior that desires for His creation to recognize the beauty of HIS design. Surrender and repent of our own sinful nature and the mindset that leads to death, surrender to His design which brings life!
** Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Eph 2:18-21
