Look at this blog by the Maxwell's, homeschooling family with 7 children who have all grown up to praise and worship God. This is the family that when I became saved and then 2 years later when I was called to homeschool, I longed to emulate. They were my perfect vision of a "Homeschool Family"
.http://www.titus2.com/blog/
In my rosy dreams, I would start having a baby every 2 years, and my husband would miraculously get saved, because wasn't it a miracle that I was saved? And then we would both gather our large family of 5 or 6 children with my oldest son in the lead, and march off to church every time the door opened. Somewhere, in my longing, I actually pictured my husband as a Deacon in the church, with me meekly and quietly encouraging him while our children joyfully obeyed him in everything. He would lead us in devotions at night and we would have hymn sing a longs because somewhere I had learned to dream of this life.
So, what really happened was, when I became devoted to the church, he became devoted to everything else but the church. He did not embrace the Lord with a joyful smile and thank me for getting saved first to save our family. No, he kinda liked where he was in the world, like most people do, and that is when I started to learn about the sovereignty of God. I still had people sending me encouraging notes in the mail that preached the verse "you shall win him without a word", "have a submissive heart and he will come to Christ" etc... Yeah right, 'cause I am in control of someone else's salvation. No, I am not, God is. I finally learned that lesson.
And while all this was happening, the babies every 2 years didn't happen either. It took 7 and 3/4 years for my 2nd living child to be born and that was after 4 years of fertility treatments that I had to practically threaten my spouse to have. He was happy with one child. Why wasn't I? But I was crushed in my soul, as any woman who longs for a child understands. It doesn't matter if it is your 1st, 2nd or 5th, that longing is painful and it obsesses your mind and heart. And it took 3 more years and another year of fertility treatments to have my 3rd and last child. And 7 weeks after she was born I knew the marriage was over too. But I refused to give up my dream. Even knowing in my heart that I would never live my dream life, I still longed for the family like the one on the above mentioned blog. I would do anything, and I tried. I read every marriage book, I memorized every verse on marriage and while I was doing this I realized that God was the author of salvation and the director of my life. When a life becomes worst to live in than to live without, when the damage is too great to risk pursuing a dream that only you hold, well at some point you have to give in, and I did. Finally, but really too late to save the damage.
And here we are, a dysfunctional, functioning, sometimes happy, always believing in God, and searching for His will and purpose, family of a Mom and 3 kids. And I see that the dream that I had, blinded me to the dream that I have. The one in front of me everyday, wanting help with their math and for me to make those chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies at 9pm. The one where my ex- husband takes care of us for absolutely no reason except that it is God directing his thoughts, and protecting me. He takes care of us so that I can continue to homeschool and he gets his kids any time he wants. He eats dinner with us and takes the kids in the river and to the mall. Something that several years ago he would have been too busy to do, and the kids love it. Amazing, that my dream, when it died, opened up my eyes to provisions that I could not have imagined. I just had to let go of what I wanted for my life and let the Lord give me what He wanted. I still wish I had that family, but then who would lead this dysfunctional one and keep it together? Because there are a whole lot more of the dysfunctional families than those perfect Godly homeschooling ones and someone has to be the Mother in those families. God calls us to different purposes, I am privileged to know He thought I was strong enough to meet this purpose.
.http://www.titus2.com/blog/
In my rosy dreams, I would start having a baby every 2 years, and my husband would miraculously get saved, because wasn't it a miracle that I was saved? And then we would both gather our large family of 5 or 6 children with my oldest son in the lead, and march off to church every time the door opened. Somewhere, in my longing, I actually pictured my husband as a Deacon in the church, with me meekly and quietly encouraging him while our children joyfully obeyed him in everything. He would lead us in devotions at night and we would have hymn sing a longs because somewhere I had learned to dream of this life.
So, what really happened was, when I became devoted to the church, he became devoted to everything else but the church. He did not embrace the Lord with a joyful smile and thank me for getting saved first to save our family. No, he kinda liked where he was in the world, like most people do, and that is when I started to learn about the sovereignty of God. I still had people sending me encouraging notes in the mail that preached the verse "you shall win him without a word", "have a submissive heart and he will come to Christ" etc... Yeah right, 'cause I am in control of someone else's salvation. No, I am not, God is. I finally learned that lesson.
And while all this was happening, the babies every 2 years didn't happen either. It took 7 and 3/4 years for my 2nd living child to be born and that was after 4 years of fertility treatments that I had to practically threaten my spouse to have. He was happy with one child. Why wasn't I? But I was crushed in my soul, as any woman who longs for a child understands. It doesn't matter if it is your 1st, 2nd or 5th, that longing is painful and it obsesses your mind and heart. And it took 3 more years and another year of fertility treatments to have my 3rd and last child. And 7 weeks after she was born I knew the marriage was over too. But I refused to give up my dream. Even knowing in my heart that I would never live my dream life, I still longed for the family like the one on the above mentioned blog. I would do anything, and I tried. I read every marriage book, I memorized every verse on marriage and while I was doing this I realized that God was the author of salvation and the director of my life. When a life becomes worst to live in than to live without, when the damage is too great to risk pursuing a dream that only you hold, well at some point you have to give in, and I did. Finally, but really too late to save the damage.
And here we are, a dysfunctional, functioning, sometimes happy, always believing in God, and searching for His will and purpose, family of a Mom and 3 kids. And I see that the dream that I had, blinded me to the dream that I have. The one in front of me everyday, wanting help with their math and for me to make those chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies at 9pm. The one where my ex- husband takes care of us for absolutely no reason except that it is God directing his thoughts, and protecting me. He takes care of us so that I can continue to homeschool and he gets his kids any time he wants. He eats dinner with us and takes the kids in the river and to the mall. Something that several years ago he would have been too busy to do, and the kids love it. Amazing, that my dream, when it died, opened up my eyes to provisions that I could not have imagined. I just had to let go of what I wanted for my life and let the Lord give me what He wanted. I still wish I had that family, but then who would lead this dysfunctional one and keep it together? Because there are a whole lot more of the dysfunctional families than those perfect Godly homeschooling ones and someone has to be the Mother in those families. God calls us to different purposes, I am privileged to know He thought I was strong enough to meet this purpose.
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