Legacy - part 3

Event #3 – Enrolling our remaining two children in traditional school.

I know in my head irrefutably that God is good and altogether righteous. I know experientially that God is good, although sometimes, in His first few chess moves, it may not appear to be so. After 20 years of homeschooling, our first child was out of the house, thriving in collegiate life and growing in Christ. Our second child would be moving out of the house for her continuing college education in the fall, with our blessing and bright hopes for her. Only two remained at home. As was our custom every summer, we began to submit our plans for our family to God in prayer, and ask Him how we would best honor Him that year. For the past 19 years, we had felt the conviction of the Lord to homeschool.

Last year, the Lord directed us to enroll our third child in a traditional Christian school. That was a major change for our family, and though we didn’t see it at first, the benefits and lessons learned were life-changing. Usually growth is hard, and hard is what we experienced, but also great peace and assurance that God was working all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. We learned, once again, that God’s purposes are not necessarily on our radar.

As we began to prepare for the next year, God began to nudge us in the direction of public charter school. We kept asking Him, “Are you sure?”, and He kept confirming. One of the many ways we knew this was from God was that, outside of an engraved invitation from God, Dave would not consider public education. That was said tongue-in-cheek, since our desire was to remain open to God’s leading, no matter where it lead, but when you do something for 19 years you begin to think that you will do it for the long haul. We prayed, did our research, and decided to enroll our two youngest in the local public charter school.

Everyone asked me what I would do with all of my “free time” now. The truth was, I didn’t know. Since the beginning of our marriage, I had always had children to take care of (well, at the beginning I was working so Dave could finish school) and teach. Now, without leading a bible study, or leading worship, I couldn’t begin to fathom what my life would look like without having my kids at home overseeing their education.

One thing I knew was that Dave wanted and needed me to be more involved in our business. And as the Lord was working out in me what it was to be united with Dave in Christ and to reflect the relationship of the church to Christ, the head, this was something that I knew I needed to do. I laughed upon reflection of my youthful expectations entering marriage. Never had I desired or imagined myself to be involved in business. Business law, accounting, marketing, business development and strategy…this was all so foreign and unsavory to my creative and analytical brain.

So I jumped in. Well, rather reluctantly, I dipped my toes in first and then slowly eased myself in.

We would start the day with an early run (or walk, when my knee was acting up from a tennis injury). Dave would go over the plans for the day, and we would pray together. I would get breakfast and the kids ready for the day. Dave would drop them at school and I would clean up, spend some time in The Word and conversation with Jesus, take a shower, and head into the office. Throughout the day Dave would share with me his plans and visions for the company or a project he was working on. I was gaining such a deep respect for Dave and the abilities God had produced in Him to run this company. Dave approaches business in such an unworldly way. His love for the Lord and desire to serve Him and others bleeds through everything he does and says.

God was giving me such great admiration for the treasure that my husband is. What a unique and godly masterpiece God was producing in Him! The vision and wisdom, passion and humility, conviction and steadfastness are the perfect blend for a leader in such a time and place as this. What I was seeing, was that by coming alongside my husband at work, helping him with various tasks, talking through problems with him, listening as he brainstorms and dreams, keeping him on track when his brain is so overloaded he forgets what he is doing, was exactly the best help I could be to him. God has richly blessed our business and we hold it in an open hand, as an offering to Him to do with as He pleases. May it bring great glory to Him and expansion to the kingdom of God.

Confirmation came quite unexpectedly at dinner a few weeks ago. It is a regular custom of ours to ask a question at the dinner table that each family member answers. On this particular night the question was, “How has God surprised you lately?” All of the answers were good, and I was praising God for His faithfulness to Himself, and thanking Him for His kindness to our family. It was Dave’s turn to answer the question and he said something to the effect that he was surprised at how full and sweet and precious our marriage is to him. He said that in the last few months he has felt such unity and support and oneness with me. He was surprised that our marriage could be this good. He was merrily mystified that we could work so well together and enjoy each other so much. I was humbled. My Savior is so kind and faithful in His gentling this stubborn stallion! Oh may I never stop learning and growing in my love for and knowledge of the One who is so infinitely wise and wonderful.


Post-Script

A few months ago, Dave told me that he missed my ministry in music and asked me to go back to Worst of Sinners (our worship band). I joyfully obliged! What a sweet, sweet Savior to love me so dearly as to bring softening to my hard heart and correction to my waywardness. I love Him so…

Legacy - part 2

Event #2. Stepping down from music ministry.

God was softening my heart to receive His admonishment. The conviction of the Holy Spirit led me to confession and repentance, like a trowel breaking up the hardened soil of my heart. The ever-gracious Gardener began to pull weeds of wrong thinking. I realized that throughout my whole marriage I had looked at my roles as separate from my husbands. With the exception of raising our children, every other role I operated in a sphere apart from Dave. Oh, I tried to never do anything without his OK, but once he would give me the green light, I took the map and the wheel and drove the course at my own pace (which was usually full speed ahead)! We had our marriage and our family, he had his careers, and I had my ministries. Now the Lord was wresting from me those desires and replacing them with a reformation! He planted in me the desire to make my family, especially my ministry to Dave, my first priority. I needed to learn what it meant to live as a CONSTANT help-meet to my husband. I needed to practice not having any other plans or motivations other than living in unity with my husband. Where previously our marriage had been a tag-team relay, not it was a three-legged race. So, I cut off a leg! In an effort to make “the big gesture” to Dave, I stepped down from the worship band. When I wrote, “I cut off my leg”, that was not just an erudite device. Music has always been one of my greatest loves. I thank God for the talent He has given me, the training He was so gracious to allow, and the great joy and pleasure it brings me.

I knew that I would miss the joy of music, worship, rehearsal, and discipline. I knew that I would miss the fellowship of my brothers and sisters, working in sweet communion with the Father. I would miss hearing how God was blessing and stretching them. I would miss the privilege of carrying their burdens to the throne, of walking with them through the valleys and enjoying the vistas of God’s goodness lavished upon them. They were family! But I would sacrifice this for the benefit of being conformed to the image of Jesus. To walk this portion of my journey in solitude and silence, submitting to the will of the Father, with the hope of His promises blossoming in our marriage.

Dave’s reaction wasn’t what I had hoped for. He didn’t jump for joy. He knew how much I would miss my musical and ministry outlet. But he recognized my motivation and was anxious to see what God would do with it.

Now the hard part began. Living with the decisions to obey God and to sacrifice… It is one thing to make a commitment and state your resolve in the moment of conviction and passion, but after the campers have sung “kumbaya”, and stamped out the campfire, all you are left with is smoke and echoes. The hours, days, and months after were hard and lonely ones. Days previously filled with researching, studying, teaching, rehearsing being surrounded by people, and being on stage, were now strangely silent and still. This left space to hear the doubts, depression, apathy, and sorrow percolate in my heart. I felt naked. Stripped of the identity that I had built. Who was I honestly to God? What did He create me to be? The Spirit kept pressing upon me my position as help-meet, the unity and oneness of marriage, and how foreign this all was to me on a practical level. How do I complete Dave tangibly? How does our marriage show to the world a picture of Christ and the church? First I had to know Dave better. I had to do more than just say at dinner, “Honey, please pass the salad dressing, and how was your day today?” I had to learn to anticipate his needs on a deeper scale. There was something more (than just knowing he wants his ice cream a little melted) to this idea of truly knowing and serving somebody.

As I began the hard process of stilling myself to listen quietly to the Lord and His Word, He began to give me ideas, and new levels of interest in Dave’s life. Things that previously, I wished he would have left at work, now, I cared about. I began to pray him though his day. I found myself wondering what he was doing, and how he would handle a certain situation (I imagined would happen) in the course of a normal day. Instead of a list of things I needed to get done in the course of a day, now I was making lists of things that I believed would help Dave.

In regards to my portion in leading worship, I have always known how inconsequential it was in the macrocosm of things, and yet, I had made it an idol in my heart. This was such an uncomfortable place to be in, yet my desire was to find my joy in Christ alone and love to love my husband and family with the first fruits of my love, not the leftovers. With the help of Christ my Savior, I will continue the process of daily dying to myself and living to, and for, and in Christ.

Legacy - Part 1

The journey that God has led our family on these past two years has been remarkable. I pen this account to my children as a legacy of God’s goodness and sovereign work in our family, and my life in particular. I pray this serves as a reminder to them to walk humbly and circumspectly with God, and to follow Him even in the things that don’t cohere to conventional wisdom. After all, God is anything but conventional or predictable.

There were many changes, decisions, or events that I could mention, but I want to track the hand of God on our family in three very personal events. Event #1: I stepped down from a women’s bible study teaching ministry. Event # 2: I stepped down from worship ministry with Worst of Sinners. Event #3: After 20 years of home schooling, we enrolled our last two children in a traditional school.

Looking at this on paper, various and sundry conclusions could be made. Spanning the spectrum from the cynical - “There is obviously some serious backsliding going on in that family!”, to the mundane - “It’s probably a mid-life crisis.”, all the way to the glib - “I wonder if they won the lottery and are planning to travel the world (without their kids)?” In any event, the facts do not tell the story. So here it is.

Event number #1 came about as a result of several long lessons hammered on my heart from the Word of God, applied by the Spirit. First, I began to notice a weakness in the arena of women’s ministry. (I know I am seriously rocking the boat here, and will never be asked to join women’s ministry, or teach at a women’s retreat again, but here it is.) From my perspective, the church and para-church organizations are busy equipping women by giving them knowledge in doctrine and theology. Lots of money in Christendom is being spent developing curricula for women. After all, there is a huge market for it. Churches spend large portions of their budgets on Women’s ministry. It is considered vital to the health and strength of a church. I will not argue that point. But what I began to observe, and experience through many counseling opportunities that teaching afforded, was that this “biblical workout” was producing women (myself included) who were in better “shape” than their husbands.

I could see two potential results of this. One was that men would stop stepping up to the plate of spiritual leadership. With the confidence and growth in spiritual knowledge, their female counterparts would be more than willing to teach and counsel, and in my experience (not a bash on men, really!), men tend to take the path of least resistance. So, if a woman volunteered to teach a class or bible study, then that’s one less thing they would have to do! The other was, that all of this biblical knowledge and spiritual wisdom has the potential to puff up.

What I witnessed in some of our bible studies was that some women would go home and try to teach their husbands the things they learned. Others would wield their knowledge to gain the upper hand in an argument, or to control or manipulate a desirous outcome. In both cases, the woman was subtly usurping the man’s position in the marriage. This became so clear to me, as I was walking in late to a Sunday school class and overheard someone say, “Too bad Kari is not here, she would know the answer to that!” At that moment I was struck with two very opposing thoughts. One born from arrogance and pride; and the other, from the Spirit, was an overwhelming sense of shame and sorrow. You see, my husband was sitting in the room I was about to enter. It was heartbreaking to me that people would value my input in a biblical matter above my husbands, who is my spiritual head!

I was immediately convicted that I had overstepped my spiritual bounds. I had always stressed to the women in my bible studies, the importance of learning from their husbands, biblical things. I had challenged them regularly to take what I said and ask their husbands if it was truth. I had even stated, on many occasions, “Believe what your husband tells you, wherever it contradicts what I say”. But there was a great disparity between what I said occasionally and what was actually happening.

From my first bible study until now, I had always felt the weight of responsibility in teaching God’s Word. I took the responsibility and privilege very seriously. One of the verses I often preached to myself was Mark 9:42, “And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” Yet now I wonder if that sense of heaviness was the Holy Spirit’s warning, which I was either ignoring or downplaying to just a, “be careful!”

Later my Greek teacher challenged me with another look at a passage I had taught to women many times before, Titus 2:3-5. I knew the passage well, but what he pointed out was not some nuance in the Greek, or obscure meaning of a word, but rather what was NOT in the list of things older women should be teaching younger women…doctrine. According to God, (explained through Paul to Titus) older women are to teach how to live out, put on, or apply this list of things. For my analytical, slightly OCD mind, this is a stretch. I can break down a passage, (how adroitly is not the issue) unpack it, put it in context, show how it relates to other passages, but restricting myself to just focusing on teaching how to love their husbands…to live out love, practically, moment by moment… I realized that I hadn’t focused on that in my marriage. So, I ended that semester of teaching. Gathered my leadership team together and told them that I could not, in good conscience, continue leading or teaching.

I have given up things in my life that have been truly a sacrifice before. I am familiar with the struggle of flesh and spirit, doing what you don’t want to do, and not doing what you want to do. I am keenly aware of my sacrifice being a mixed bag of motives… But this was one of the hardest things for me to give up, to date.