Not Alone: Trusting God to Help You Raise Godly Kids in a Spiritually Mismatched Home (4 page)

And finally, as the title of this book says, you are not alone. Say it with me, my precious friend: “I am not alone.” God is with you every step of the way, and Lynn and I consider it a privilege and a calling to be on the path with you. We always, always, always love hearing from you! Let’s take a sip of that coffee (or tea!) and share our hearts together.

Love you so very much, my dear sister in Jesus,

Dineen

[email protected]

Extraordinary Kids

Trusting God to Make Up the Difference

Dineen

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need,
like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and
read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the
result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit
of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human
hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ before God.
Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for
ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made
us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter
but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

2 CORINTHIANS 3:1-6

Am I Enough?

This question has silently plagued me through the years, most certainly fueled by my insecurities and our common enemy in this world. I tell people often that I am a recovering perfectionist. It’s true. As an only child of a wonderful single mom who worked two jobs at times to provide for the two of us, I had to learn to look out for myself at a very young age. It wasn’t easy, but I managed. Even into adulthood I thought I had my life under control.

So when I became a mom, I thought my daughters would be so much better off with two parents than I had been with one. My expectations were that two parents made a perfect family— and thus a life free of the struggles I’d known as a child.

Yet every time I looked at my daughters, I seemed to see everything I’d done wrong and very little I’d done right. How could my girls possibly grow up to be strong women of faith when their mother had been so late coming to the game?

Despite having two parents who loved them and who loved each other, my girls’ paths to adulthood were not the perfect journeys I’d hoped for. Both of my daughters struggled with their own fears and anxieties in a world that told them they weren’t good enough, weren’t thin enough, just weren’t enough because they didn’t meet the world’s one-size-fits-all expectations.

My oldest daughter, Rachel, traveled the road of middle college, because her creativity wasn’t welcomed in a high school that was bent on making all its students fit one mold. And my youngest daughter, Leslie, wound up going the way of a GED after her recovery from cancer and depression.

No proms, no sweet-16 romances (maybe that was a blessing in disguise?) and no traditional high-school graduations. My girls seemed destined to walk through this life in their own unique and often pain-filled ways. The older they grew, the more I realized I had to let go of my expectations of what their lives would look like.

And especially what their faith lives would look like.

Add to that the fact that I was the spiritual leader of our family. How in the world (or should I say in the heavenly realms?) had God thought that I could raise two daughters to faith?

Even today, with my daughters now young adults, I ask myself at times, “Am I enough?” Am I enough to be the mother and friend my girls need to help them become the women God is calling them to be? How do I keep from adding my anxieties and fears to theirs and help them walk paths of victory?

And how do I help them walk paths of victory even in the choices they will make for their future? Ah, now there is a question worth exploring …

You Too?

Lynn and I have a wonderful, spiritually mismatched community on Facebook and on our website, and we often hear from women and men who share their concerns and prayer requests with us. As I have read these burdens and cares over the years, I have found that same question—Am I enough?— behind many of these dear people’s fears. It’s right there between the lines of their prayer requests, just as it is even in my own fears. But instead of leaving this question hidden within their heartfelt cares, I wanted to bring it into the open.

So I went to our Spiritually Unequal Marriage (SUM) community and asked how they would finish and then answer the question, Am I enough … ?

Think for a moment about how you would answer this question. These are some of the answers I received from our online community:

• Am I enough to hold the family together? To teach my kids what they need to know about God’s love? To actually sanctify this house (see 1 Cor. 7:14)?
  
• Am I enough to teach my kids the truth of Jesus Christ and lead them to salvation? Am I enough to be a godly mom and wife, a good role model, and to help support my family emotionally and spiritually?
  
• Am I enough to be a mom and wife too? How do I balance both?
  
• Am I enough for my kids, my husband and everyone else depending on me?
  
• Am I enough to point the way to True North for my children and never let my flag waver no matter how fierce the storm of the world may blow—even when the storm may be my own husband?
  
• Am I enough to overcome my junk so I don’t pass it on to my kids?
  
• Am I enough to overcome my own fears so my kids don’t experience them firsthand?
  

Here’s a compiled list of variations of this question: Am I enough …

• To do it all?
  
• To be Jesus to my family?
  
• To lead others to Christ?
  
• To
  really
  raise godly children in
  this
  world?
  
• To fulfill my God-ordained purpose on earth?
  
• To show my children that they need to return to the Lord?
  
• To be used as a vessel to provide unconditional love?
  

How about you, dear one? Are you asking yourself this question? Whether you’re in a spiritually mismatched marriage, divorced, or a single mom, know this one truth: you aren’t alone. Many women have asked the questions you are asking.

Walls, Fleeces and Unlikely Heroes

Then the L
ORD
said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into
your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.”

JOSHUA 6:2

The Bible is full of trial-filled stories about people who seemed to persevere and to overcome only by the literal grace of God. I love these huge testimonies of God’s larger-than-life plans.

When Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the city of Jericho, God gave them instructions that could easily be counted ridiculous by human definition (see Josh. 6:2-7). How could marching around a wall in silence once a day for six days and marching around seven times on the seventh day bring those walls down?

But the Israelites did exactly as God instructed them. They marched around those walls once a day without making a peep for six days. Then they marched around again on that seventh day, seven times, ready to shout when the priests blew their trumpets. I read in one commentary that based upon what historians know historically and archaeologically, the front line of soldiers most likely met the tail end as the Israelites returned to camp each day.

I wish I could go back in time to see the expressions on the faces of the men who had already marched the city once as they met the eyes of the ones who had yet to go. Can you imagine what they may have said to each other? Each day’s march was a test and an affirmation of their faith. They trusted God to do what they most definitely could not.

You see, these walls were the very same kind that had discouraged the spies whom Moses had sent out 40 years earlier (see Num. 13:28). Even though these marching Israelites with Joshua were from the generation after that of the spies, men who had survived the 40 years in the wilderness to see the Promised Land, I can only imagine what some of them might have been thinking:

What if we blow it like our fathers and mothers did?

What if I don’t march right?

What if I don’t shout loud enough?

What if I can’t do this?

Whatever doubts they may have had in light of what their parents had done, they most likely kept them to themselves. I know I would have.

Then there’s Gideon: “When the angel of the L
ORD
appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The L
ORD
is with you, mighty warrior’” (Judg. 6:12).

Have you ever read the story of Gideon? Here’s this guy doing what he has to in order to appease his enemy. He spends his days and most likely his nights threshing wheat to survive, all the while hiding from a relentless enemy, the Midianites.

Then one day an angel of the Lord shows up and calls him a mighty warrior. I can see this unassuming man looking over his shoulder and doing a double take. Maybe his thoughts went something like this:

Are you talking to me?

Have you really looked at me?

I’m the smallest in my clan.

I’m thinking you want that guy over there.

You’ve got the wrong guy, dude!

But God is never wrong, is He? And He is, oh, so very patient. He understood Gideon’s reservations and doubts and even let the man test God’s calling on his life two times. A wet and a dry fleece later, Gideon prepared for battle with 32,000 men against a force nearly four times as large.

The odds still weren’t looking too good, but I can picture Gideon touching the fleece that he may have tucked into his belt as a reminder of who really was the commander in charge. Maybe even God’s words kept running through his fear-filled mind and heart: “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive” (Judg. 6:16).

Then God told Gideon that his army was too large.

Really? Doesn’t make sense in our human calculations, but God most definitely had a reason for saying it. He wanted to make sure the Israelites knew without a doubt who would be responsible for their victory. It’s not that God wanted to wag His mighty finger at Gideon and say, “I told you so,” but He didn’t want the Israelites to forget Him—to forget that He always had their backs.

Yes, as poor Gideon stood by watching, God did the unthinkable and shrunk down Gideon’s army first to 12,000 men and then to a mere 300. Can you imagine this guy looking at himself and his men and asking, “God, is this enough?”

Letting Go of Expectations and Replacing
Them with God’s Explanations

God has this wonderful way of showing us His truths in order to counter past failures in our lives, whether those failures were our parents’ or our own, and giving us a glimpse of His amazing and failure-proof hope.

Bible stories like Joshua’s and Gideon’s are our stories too. We often face struggles and challenges that we know we are not capable of handling in our own strength. But when we are obedient to God’s call to march around a wall, or when in our doubt we put out a fleece just to make sure God has the right person for the job, we discover God is faithful.

The walls of Jericho fell not by the hands of men but by their shouts of glory to God. One hundred and twenty thousand Midianites were defeated by 300 men, hand-picked by God, as they blew trumpets, broke jars and shouted victory for God.

Just as we ask God if we are enough for the tasks He’s set before us, if we are enough to serve Him in all the areas of our lives, if we are enough to be faithful to what we know is true and to raise our children to know Him and His Son, Jesus, so too have many of God’s most faithful servants asked, “Am I enough?”

The truth is, we can stop asking that question, because God has already answered it. God’s explanation is, “You don’t have to be enough, because I am.”

Here are some more of God’s explanations:

Can I do this?
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).

How can I do this?
“I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13,
NLT).

Am I alone in this?
“Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

Who will help me?
“The L
ORD
is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The L
ORD
is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27:1).

What if I fail?
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37).

What about the rough times?
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

I have walked with God for a long time now, and I will share with you that trusting Him for my children’s future has probably been
the
most difficult challenge for me. Along with every prayer I prayed, there was a generous helping of worry.

But over the years God has proven to me over and over again that He is faithful.