~ The Blogs of A Halfway To Sunday Mom ~ |
Your child is walking down a dark and narrow path, it is straight, but only a warm light is there to help guide your child on this path. The light feels safe, but the dark is full of unknowns. As your child is walking down this path a bright light of color shimmers on one side. Your child is curious, the light looks inviting and the path clear. The warm light on the path is overtaken by the bright light as your child walks closer to the bright path's entrance. The temptation of this path and its sure footing over takes you child and they step onto this new path. As they travel with the light so bright it is blinding, they don't realize the twist and turns they are making. Other people are on the path headed back the way they came, they beg your child to go with them, but your child is enjoying the path they are now on. After awhile your child starts to wonder where this path is going to lead and before they know it they hit a dead end. Turning around in circles, trying to shield their eyes from the light, they see they are not the only ones at the dead end. There are hundreds maybe even more. Some seem to be wandering around aimlessly while others seems to have given up on an escape and have curled up to die in a heap at the dead end. Your child begins to realize the mistake they made from wandering off the safe path they were on. Your child now sees the truth of what has happened. Lies and temptation have cornered your child and they know they must find a way back to the straight and narrow path. Before they go they try to get as many people as they can to follow them back. They are coaxing to them and at the end begging them to follow. Some listen and get up while most stay where they are, blinded, hopeless, or lifeless. Sadly your child makes their way back, twisting and turning. Suddenly there is a light so bright it is emitting warm heat, brighter then anything they have ever seen they close their eyes and follow the warmth it offers, back to the dark, straight and narrow path. Stepping back onto the true path and inching away from the other, the bright light goes out and what is left is the once again warm, dim light. Step by step, guiding your child to the end, where all things will be new and perfect. Behind your child, follows all the others they helped back onto the true path... Good evening mommies!!! I am so excited because for the past two months I have not been able to upload any new pictures on my computer; which meant no new pictures for my blog post!!! But thanks to my awesome sister in law and a back door she knew about, I know can upload pictures again. Anyway, onto this week's blog post. This post weighed heavy on my last week. But without the picture to upload it would have been hard to explain in just written word. All good now though! So lets begin. As you may remember, in a previous blog I had posted my loss of faith completely. Recently finding it again (thank God, literally, thank God) I began digging deeper and deeper into the Christian faith. What I came up with has prepared me for when my children leave the house and has given me further wisdom for my path as well. In the above picture the cross represents our life. Birth until heaven, a straight but narrow line. This is a rough copy, fyi, I plan to make the final soon and will share it. Moving on. The path to heaven through Jesus as I said it straight and narrow, it is also dark. We constantly are walking in the unknown with the light of the Holy Spirit being our only means to see immediately in front of us. Along this path are numerous (I'm sure there are more then I drew) detours. These detours are bright and tempting but offer no warmth, promising a path better than the one we are on. It is a 100% guarantee that we will take at least one of these paths in our lifetime. The path will seem right at first but as it turns and twists it will begin to feel the opposite, cold and unfamiliar. Then we will hit a dead end, at that point we will see we were not the only one lead down this path. There will be numerous others at this dead end. At that point we have two choices. The first is to give up and stay at the dead end with no hope of returning to the living path. The second will be to fight through the crowds and make our way back to the path Jesus made for us. But it doesn't stop there. No, we have the chance to bring people back with us (this could one day include our very own children)!!! We will beg and plead with the people at the dead end to follow us. Some will follow, most wont. They will choose to stay at the dead end, away from the true path, away from safety, away from the living, stuck in hell on earth. But we will get back on the right path, hopefully bringing others back with us. Mothers we all have this path, we all have the same potential detours, we all want the same end... a life of eternity in heaven. We also don't want this for just us, or our family/friends, spouse... we want it for our children, so bad our hearts ache. As moms this can be a hard thing for us to be content with. Content you ask? Well yes, if we are not content with simply doing our best every day we will start taking a dead end path! The dead end path of fear, with the potential to leave us curled up in a ball at its end! We need to accept the fact that we can't keep our children in a bubble of safety while they are living with us. Think about that for a second, what will happen to them when they finally are on their own? If they are like me they will immediately hit the road for some of those dead end paths that are so tempting. My sister in law and brother recently had dinner with us. During dinner they began to tell us about their 8 year old son and some of their newly developed concerns. They went on to tell us about some friends he has and the influences he is getting from them. Now, these kids aren't horrible kids, my sister in law said around them they are pretty darn good. But, there have definitely been some rub off of choice words, actions, etc. She expressed how concerned she was but also was confused as what to do. She didn't know if she should let them continue to play or sever the relationships. In the end we talked about it and I told her I was actually proud of her and my brother. They have decided to limited where playdates can happen and gone over why certain behavior will not be tolerated, but they are allowing them to be friends still. My nephew is learning a valuable lesson early in his life because of his parents. He is learning that there are paths that you can chose to go down that aren't always best and have consequences, but that he can also help others with these lessons he learns. Let me give you an example. Lets take the "cussing" that my nephew did. My sister in law and brother talked to him about why that word can not be used and why it is hurtful and disrespectful. Okay, so two things could have happened. One, they tell my nephew he can't be friends with these boys anymore and those boys go on to continue their behavior, possibly getting new hurts from the loss of a friend. Or second, my nephew remains their friend and when they cuss, he can simply and gently tells them why he doesn't do it, when they see him not playing along. They could then (if God works on their hearts) start back to a better path, a more respectful path, because they have someone they could start looking up too, that has wisdom beyond his years. A friend, that wants to be friends even when they make a mistake. Our children are predestined to help so many people. We have no idea the spider web of influence they are destined to spin. Our job is to be content in knowing this. Our job is to be content in knowing they will make mistakes, and if they are in the home, we will be there to correct them in love; if they are out of the house, that we did our job well enough, they will find their way back on their own with new disciples following them. Our job is to be content in knowing that God knows the outcome, He knows our heart, He knows our desires, He knows our longing for our children to make it home to heaven... God allows evil in the world so that each person can use his free will to choose... To choose an eternal life of good or of evil, but that choice He leaves solely to us. But our immortal souls have only this short time to decide which world it wants to live in for eternity ~
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