Holy Week is here.
How timely that, just last week, I was wrestling with old, deep issues of selfishness, struggling to find truth in the sticky webs of sin that were clouding my vision. I momentarily felt stifled by my life, by the long sickness that my kids were passing to one another in the longest relay race ever, by the voices in my head that were saying that I had given up so much and that I needed something more and something different.
And I’m not talking like, a new family or a career or something. I’m talking like, Fridays off.
But my pity party was no fun, because I was fully aware the entire time that I was wrong, and that something was very, very off. Thus, my discontentment was of the wrestling rather than the stagnant variety, and the two of us (discontentment and me) sparred all week long in every room of this house until I got to the bottom of my issues…
you know what I found?
A hard and fast lapse in my vision. A forgotten mission. In the trenches of everyday living (and lots of kid diarrhea), I was failing to see with clarity my God-given purpose during my short stay on this earth.
How could I have completely forgotten, in one random week, that I’m supposed to be dying over here?
And that, in my daily death, I find more life than I could ever find in having that free Friday I was throwing an internal hissy-fit over.
God is so good to answer our heartfelt prayers for truth, and you can always know that if you ask for something good and biblical, He will give it to you, posthaste. By the week’s end, I was seeing my mission and purpose everywhere…
in my conscience, prodded by the Spirit…in my deepest convictions…in Desiring God blog posts (I’ll share more on that later)…in random conversations with friends…in our Sunday School lesson…during the singing time…in the sermon…
and the recurring theme was this: die.
This life is not about me and what I want and what I feel and what I expect. And those things would never make me happy anyway…
and as I rocked by Baby Betsie for 45 uninterrupted minutes on Saturday afternoon, I had the sweet relief of using that time to pray and think about God and my growth and my purpose as the wife of my husband and the mama of my little children, rather than feeling that horrid fluttery feeling of impatience and drudgery that had been my trademark earlier in the week.
I could see it with my own eyes and feel it in my own two full and happy arms: when I die to myself and live for someone else in the name of the gospel, I find sweet life. And life abundant…
whether I am on a foreign mission field caring for orphans, writing important books that are changing the world, or…
rocking a 1 1/2 year old girl in the upstairs nursery of my house. She was sad and lonesome while her siblings were away, and she needed me. And, by the grace of God, He reminded that the gospel is found, even here, even in an old, pink, upholstered rocking chair with only me and Betsie in the house.
I worked hard over the weekend and had great plans of a 3- or 4-part series about Gideon’s birthday party this week, but after yesterday’s extremely soul-stirring sermon on Holy Week, I think I’ll postpone that, and encourage all of us to use this entire week to somberly and intentionally meditate on the cross. As my husband said yesterday, we will NEVER take up our own cross daily if we are not dwelling daily on the cross of Christ…
And if we are not dying, we might not be alive to begin with.
I am more excited than I have ever been to examine where and how my life began as I walk through Holy Week alongside my family. Last week’s struggles might have been humbling and difficult and heartbreaking, but their result displays the sovereignty and graciousness of God…
for I am all ears, ready to listen, ready to learn…
and, for this moment at least, ready to die.
