This is your mother, get on the path and stay there!

After years of just serving on a worship team, and not doing much else for my church, I find myself with the time…and the energy to be involved in a Bible study class.  I’ve had many opportunities to do this before, and I used to do it a lot when I first became a Christ follower but as my children grew something happened along the way.  

While my children were still at home, I spent most of my time with thoughts of them, what they needed, what they wanted…should they want that… how to keep them living for Christ when I wasn’t breathing down their necks…etc.  It’s not that I didn’t read the bible or pray… because I did…I had too.  It’s more like I didn’t have the energy to share a study with … other people.  It’s like God gave me the opportunity to “control” how my children turned out but … I never really felt like I could control it. And I was consumed with that thought. 

If my children did “good” or behaved “morally” I felt “oh good…I got something right”.  But… if they behaved badly I felt…ugh…guilty… “what am I doing wrong?” At times (many times) I felt like I wasn’t doing the job God gave me, which was to raise holy children.  All my energy was spent doing this monumental duty.  “How do I guide them the right direction?” “How do I keep them from falling off the path?” and when they do fall off the path, “How do I help them get back on?”. Raising holy children.  It’s not something that can be done without God’s help that’s for sure.  On top of that I had a full time job outside the home… more guilt.  I didn’t understand how others could do all that they did…I still don’t, but I knew I couldn’t.  Looking back… I can’t point to any one thing I did that I knew was right… except … pray, pray, pray… and then pray some more.  I prayed for smooth paths, or rough paths. I prayed for hedges of protection from others and … from themselves.  I prayed that when they did something wrong that they would get caught.  And I mean when, because "All have sinned" why would I think my kids were different?  I also prayed for strength to keep wanting them to get caught…which got harder and harder the older they got.  Was it enough?  I pray that it was because now ….I’m done. 

I am proud of my children… they are doing awesome!  I am relieved and terrified to not be in “control” of their future anymore though.  Now their good and their bad is between them and God.  I’m not part of the equation… I still give bits of advice now and then but I’m on the outside of them now.    So consequently… I find myself with a bit more energy.  I have taken up learning the piano …again, and a Sunday Bible study class called Walk With Me.  It’s been along time since I’ve been in a classroom … I hope I can remember how to study.*wink*