One of the harder things I deal with is keeping the boundaries of matching what excites me professionally with what works for my family with what is required financially in my personal life. We know from experience we can live on one income and that is doable on my Dear dear husband’s salary….so that said, we have electricity, home, food and transportation and a wee wee bit squeeze room if I do not work ever again. However, after 3 years of more or less doing little from home except to create fun money, move money, or holiday money we know that the fallout is not the budget….the fallout is Mom gets very very intellectually droll is she isn’t ever using the gifts God gave her and has an outlet for her high high energy…..and the truth is, within strict boundaries that my husband has established and I agree are wise for our family…..I have space to do a bit more that makes me feel like I use the talents and skills I have in a positive way to grow people.
We have so little time to be Mom and Dad for our children. Those years which seem forever at 2, torpedo by between 4 and 19…you wake up one day just figuring out how to keep their milk stained clothes from souring to find out they are putting on a cap and gown and talking about leaving for college. If you are not intentional about the time and the values you develop in your children, well, they are what you make them. The message from the former public school teacher and youth director is strong for me…I was one….children need and want you to be more than providers for them….and to ignore that fact is asking for developmental disasters in their lives.
That said…..today’s meetings outcomes will absolutely mean something different than I thought when I arrived for them. What I would do/say/feel when I came to work this week with one of the most powerfully creative forces I have ever reckoned with…and one of the people I most admire…. has slanted from “Oh oh oh I so want to be given the opportunity to be x in this organization” to “You know what, I so admire who you are, what you are trying to build….and while I am so on board for this, my role will be lesser and more defined than perhaps once desired….you deserve someone who wants this as much as you do and who doesn’t have the boundaries I am choosing to have where commerce and time with my children is involved”
Never has a no thank you been more freeing and at the same time more the choosing to give away a long term dream as I discovered that perhaps in this chapter of my life as wife, mom and step mom…..to reach the dream and arrive to be offered the dream…..
I discovered the dream was the wrong Eden…..its not the paradise I have long dreamed of….
and at the same exact moment….a new Eden, one I never imagined could be real, God absolutely is now forming before my very eyes in the ways of teachers, mentors, contracts and business relationships……
God is good and as long as you remain obedient to surrendering knowing anything and by the Word of God discovering your answers to the questions, you never have to be in the struggle again with what to do. This is where I have so much trouble….forgetting who leads you and trying to take the reins again in my own silly hands……like I know better for myself than God does…but oh man, how hard is it to keep my ego/mind out of it and my flesh from it!!!
You never have to remain in confusion about which path to take. You never have to grope blindly along, struggling to find your own way. ..or the way to go in your professional or personal or family life…..for God’s word truly is a lamp unto your feet and when we take the time to stop being the god of our own life and surrender to Him….He never fails us.
Hard boundaries to choose…..harder still to do in real life whether it be the discipline of finding contentment where ever you are…or the discipline of putting aside financial prosperity to choose obedience when God asks for it..and other times to accept the responsibilities of new wealth when He deems its time for you to grow……..and I am beyond thankful for the grace that is provided when I fail…..which is so often there is not a number large enough to cover it!
God is good, all the time.
