For my kids...

Sometimes I sit down to write and my thoughts are so jumbled that the attempt to write a coherent sentence is never finished. I find myself frustrated at my lack of ability in communicating the thoughts flooding my mind that I push my laptop away ready to give up.

It is typically in those moments, when I'm flooded with frustration, that I begin searching for the answers that will calm my doubts and settle my fears.  I begin searching for that quiet place within my heart. It is a place where I discover a stillness that allows God to speak truth into my life.  In the quiet of my room, I hear His still small voice proclaim in thunderous roars the promises He had spoken over my life. For that time I am full of His confidence and I completely trust His ways. 

I've spent a fair amount of time writing out my thoughts  and what I want to share with my children about the God I so adore. Right now it is still a jumbled mess but today God led me to this article and the jumbled mess in my head became clear. I'm sure I'll eventually sit down and find a way to write for my children something as inspiring as what this writer wrote but for now, I'll meditate over her words and thank God for His amazing timing and faithfulness.

If I Could Teach My Children One Thing…

Elisabeth Corcoran

Well, there are a thousand things I would teach them. So much I still want them to know before they have to handle life on their own. And Jesus knows, I’m trying.

But I’ve watched my kids navigate a tough few days, both for totally different reasons, and if there were one thing that I would want them to know how to do above all else, it would be this:

When hurting, when life throws you a curveball, when a relationship is painful or ends, how to find comfort in Jesus, how to let God tend your soul.

The tricky thing about teaching this, is that this is one of the most elusive spiritual disciplines I’ve ever attempted to master. And I’ve been working on it for all of the twenty-six years I’ve been following him.

So I would start by telling them when your heart is broken, God promises to be even closer in ways we don’t understand. How can he be closer than he already is? I have no idea, really, but he is. He loves the brokenhearted in special and specific ways. Maybe it’s because he totally gets the feeling of being brokenhearted; I’m not sure.

I would tell them that the word of God is the key to his comfort, especially, I’ve found, the Psalms. There isn’t one emotion left uncovered in that book. David and the other writers went through it all. Bad for them, good for us. Betrayal, unfaithfulness, sinning, being sinned against, being chased, having enemies, feeling far from God, searching for him and not finding him, searching for him and finally finding him. Relational strife. Love, loss of love. Friendship, loss of friendship. Life, loss of life. You name it, it’s in there.

I would then tell them that there is a voice that whispers amazing things to you, especially when you’re hurting, but it comes after time and time and time in God’s word, learning what he would say to you, discerning his voice from yours, discerning his voice from the enemy. (As my dear friend Charlotte once told me, “If {the words you’re hearing} are being said with condemnation, that’s not the voice of Jesus”). It’s the Spirit of God bringing Scripture to your mind, perhaps even words you don’t remember ever reading, let alone memorizing. And it’s the Spirit of God speaking distinct and intimate things to your heart, things that only God could know would mean something to you.

And then I would tell them that it’s a different kind of comfort from the human kind, to not let that surprise them or mystify them or discourage them. There are no human arms holding you when you are in the embrace of God. He doesn’t magically and physically appear. There aren’t gentle eyes looking back at you. There aren’t hands to wipe away the tears. It’s different, but it’s just as real. It’s different but it can heal, even more than human comfort.

When you let it. And I would say when you let it because there is a surrendering that comes when you go to God for something, especially when you go to him to have him put the pieces back together. It’s an admission that you can’t do it on your own. It’s an admission that you believe in an invisible God, that you believe he is good, that you believe he is loving. And it’s an admission that the comforts of this world fall short – even the gentlest words and hugs and touches from mothers and friends – they can only do so much. When you come to God for comfort, you are in essence saying, you are it for me. You are my only true hope of feeling better, getting better, healing up from this. You are it.

There is so much more to this. So much more I haven’t even learned or experienced on my own. But I would tell them that I have known the comfort of God when no one or nothing else could comfort me, that it is a true thing, that it is something they can have and own for themselves. And that once they do, they’ll be changed, and they’ll be healed, and they will know it to be true.