I was glad to discover the author Jennifer Phillips from an article about parenting she wrote on The Gospel Coalition website (see here for her blog). In her book she very amusingly writes about her family life as they moved from America to Australia; then the adoption process as they adopted Lucy from China and all the trials they faced in the process. I loved the way she writes so honestly and the lessons she draws out of the circumstances God choose for them. Here are some extracts:
Yet, instead of seeing my emotions as a warning light that we should abort All Things Hard, they became a sweet reminder that God’s goal for my life is not my comfort and ease. Hardships, discomfort are extensions of His tender mercy because He uses them to whittle away the countless idols to which I vainly cling.
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Our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
C.S. Lewis; Mere Christianity
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The family's well-laid plans went very wrong. Her reaction was to be absolutely devastated and so very angry. How could this be?
But then:
But then:
The Lord brought this passage to mind: “A man’s heart devises his way: but the LORD directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). But my plan was a good one, Lord! Straightforward, well researched, by the book, painless. Yes, the journey I will always desire is a straight line, because that is the shortest distance between two points, right? But the twists, dips, and turns are what cause me to fall on my face before my Father, the ultimate Map Maker, a most-trusted Guide. After all, the journey is His story to tell. Boy, was I ever going to fall on my face—over and over again. The journey had only just begun.
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Julie Sparkman says: “Belief is not without fear, anger, darkness, disillusionment. Belief does not mean I have to say these circumstances are good. Belief is not a test of my competency or a test to prove my righteousness, defined by how well I respond to this. God uses bad and ugly but it doesn’t make them right or okay. I am still in God’s story of redemption—this chapter will not thwart that.” Isn’t that freeing? The Christian life is not a perfect tightrope walk of always doing the right thing, saying the right thing, never wavering. Instead, it’s a wobbly procession of slipping and stumbling, then refocusing your eyes on Jesus, walking confidently, stumbling, refocusing, and walking again. It’s our humanity that reveals our need for Jesus and causes us to run to Him again.
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God chose to give us a stage on which to display not the strength of our faith, but the splendor of His glory. It was not the path we would have chosen, and we would have given anything to make things different, but we could submit because we trusted Him and His unchanging character. By the way, sometimes, by not meeting our felt need, God actually meets our spiritual need. I thought I needed a passport; God knew I needed to be broken. He knew I needed to be strengthened in my dependence on Him, in my ability to trust beyond what I could see. Even though the circumstances were painful, our God was and is in control, and that reassurance kept me walking on that rocky path instead of deserting it altogether.
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Prayer is messy. God isn’t concerned with a formula; He just wants to hear my heart.
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Obedience sometimes equals pain, but always, eventually, equals joy.
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