“At dawn the disciples saw Jesus standing on the beach, but
they couldn’t see who he was. He called out, ‘Friends, have you caught any
fish?’ ‘No,’ they replied. Then he said, ‘Throw out your net on the right-hand
side of the boat, and you’ll get plenty of fish!’ So they did, and they
couldn’t draw in the net because there were so many fish in it.” John 21: 4-6
This last week it
has finally started to hit me…my oldest son will be leaving not to return to me
until December in only a few short weeks now.
I won’t be able to speak with him every day after school to ask how his
day is or to hear his funny stories about what his friends did or what happened
in class or at recess. I won’t be a part
of the various events he will be attending on the weekends or be able to teach
his Sunday School class or help with a school party. I will only have the occasional phone call or
e-mail to check in with him. What will
make it even harder is that my youngest son will be here with me, so the oldest
will be missed that much more because I will still be living the “family” life
and attending all the school and family events, but my family will be
incomplete this time. We are shrinking
from four to three in terms of our every day life. Before this past year in counseling, I never
would have thought to divide my children between households. I never would have thought that this could be
God’s plan for them, for all of us. It
still doesn’t feel good to me, but I have to trust in God’s guidance. This is
the path He has laid out for us, and I am working hard to see the world before
me through God’s eyes. Just like the
disciples in the boat who only needed to throw their nets on the other side of
the boat to catch fish, I need to put aside what I thought would be best for everyone
and start considering the other side of things.
God often has a different way for us than what we expect for ourselves
and/or our children and families. That’s
what my “The One Year Praying through the Bible” devotional today brought out
for me in the verse above. God may want
us to follow a different strategy or make a course correction from what we had
programmed into our internal GPS. Looking
back over the last year from June 2012 to now, I realize that that’s exactly
what God used this time for, to correct the course the boys and I were headed
on when this crazy journey began, to show me through the people He brought into
my life to provide guidance, that there was another way to move forward. During
this year, I have had to continue to let go even more than I already had of my
boys and allow Him to work directly in their lives without so much interference
from me…it’s been one of the more peaceful years of the last 15, surprisingly,
but that’s because I gave up a little more each day, week, and month of the
control I was holding on so tightly to and let God have it. If you have been reading my blog over the
last couple of years, you know that letting go is a topic of discussion for me
quite often, and that’s because it’s a day-by-day process. When you hold on so
closely to ideas, people, ways of being and doing for so long, it takes a lot
of strength to let it go, one little idea, person, or way of being and doing at
a time. I am sure I will keep finding
things that I need to release in terms of control in my life for years to come,
but it feels good to be one baby step closer to unburdening myself entirely to
God’s will and way. It turns out that
looking at the world in a new way isn’t scary at all. It’s actually quite
freeing!
No comments:
Post a Comment