Enough...with some delight to boot!

I should have figured it wouldn’t be long before I was prompted to write about what life is like when you add an 18 year old to your home with out prior “experience”. If it’s important to you to know the “hows” of Whitney ending up in our home, then ask me sometime! We are praying BIG for reconciliation and renewal in her and with her parents. Whitney is a special gift we’ve received lately. I know there have been many “gifts” in parenting my own kids, but this one continues to uniquely bless me. Whitney if you’re reading this...WE LOVE YOU!

How do you set out to love someone in your home, in your life and part of your family who has not been there all along, and for the long haul? I really can’t answer that (yet?), but it didn’t take long for the Lord to show us more of our own sin. Really not in dealing with Whitney, but with our own children!

There really is nothing in me (or my family) that is experienced or can ‘muster’ loving Whitney the way she deserves to be loved. So, it has been a great time to learn to abide in Jesus or should I say frankly it catapults me onto the lap of the Lord. I find it almost comical that in this leaning, the Lord has not only guided us for the steps of the moment (b/c that’s really all we can grasp), but He has given us such delight in Whitney. I wonder if this is how Jesus felt about his disciples...I mean they couldn’t give him anything. Yet he treasured their company and brought them alongside what he was doing. Why? I’m sure it’s multi-fold, but I bet a piece of it was this sense that He was just walking along with his Father and it’s just what He had for him. His Father was enough. I mean he didn’t need them! Since Jesus was delighting in God, He could minister and love these broken sinners intimately!!

God does that with us...still. That’s good news. But how does that fit into my delighting in Whitney, often differently than with my own children? I really think it’s the simplicity of leaning on Jesus and delighting in him as we love her. This frees me to love her with much less ‘schizophrenic’ ways than my kids. OK...so maybe you got this down early on in your parenting. There are only 2 ways I have: 1) in theory or 2) total weakness and frustration the Lord has blessed me with. Maybe on some days we do run on experience and smoothness of well executed plans we put in place. But you know what...for the most part it really doesn’t bring me DELIGHT! Why? Because it’s only as good as the next ‘unexpected bump’. The delight is fleeting because my hope gets placed on ‘doing’ parenting (or my list) well. Really life with my own children is as ‘unknown and unique’ as it is with Whitney. We just think we know the days ahead or will mold them as we wish. This is one of the gifts the Lord has used Whitney to give me (again); the same gift of suffering and weakness: the gift of listening and believing the heart of Jesus. It’s not really as crazy as my own heart or as calculated as I’d like it to be. The heart of Jesus is lived out through me (and my family) in the Spirit. It’s REAL-TIME, it’s ENOUGH grace for the moment, and ENOUGH wisdom from the Spirit that I need for the moment. The heart of Jesus says, I AM ENOUGH.

I think it’s ironic that the Lord takes the ‘noise’ of family and adding an 18 year old sweetie to our home to quiet my soul this Christmas. Friends, HE DRAWS NEAR to us...and DEAR to us, at Christmas AND always...HE IS ENOUGH...all on his own:-)