Refinement
Last night I was able to spend some quality time with my circle of friends. We've pretty much grown up together since our high-school days, and now we are married with children. In our single days we were on youth ministry leadership teams together, lived together in Christian communities, and would routinely get together for some intense "praise and worship" prayer gatherings, which are now few and far between.
We were able to have praise and worship again last night and we prayed over a friend who has been struggling with a number of issues and whose birthday is coming up soon. Afterward we sat and talked about how different it is now with all of us married and busy with family and work versus when we were young and got together for prayer weekly. All of us expressed how even though there are more distractions and less prayer gatherings, we wouldn't change it for the world.
We talked about how we all would be praying and experiencing intesne, ecstatic emotions in our youth. We would be on fire for the Lord and be physically bursting with joy. Now, if we can enter into one song and truly pray it from our heart in intense concentration, we are happy.
Before we would talk about how we want to go tell the whole world about the love of God and spiritually touch every young person we met. Now, we just want to survive our days without killing our children.
Yet we wouldn't change it, or go back. Interesting. Back then, if we experienced such droughts that we would be happy just being able to enter into only one song, we would have rushed over to the victim and laid hands on them and prayed for the well to spring forth again! OK, maybe a slight exaggeration.... but still. One of the men there commented that maybe, back then, we needed that abundance of consolations from God to get us where we are today. Maybe we needed that coddling by our Father in the beginning in order to have the strength to get through the droughts of today. It's similar to the way we raise our children, from the nurturing care of infancy to making them build strength, character, and responsibility as they increase in age.
It is hard to feel that zeal going on no sleep after nursing your baby all night, or feel that peace after wrestling your child down to the ground in order to insert the medicine dropper full of antibiotics into her mouth. It is hard to sit down in loving sweetness to pray with the man whoyou are arguing with over money, time managment, household duties, or whatever issues arise in a normal marriage.
The thought of getting dressed, preparing a potluck dish, finding (and paying) a babysitter for your kids in order to go to a friend's house and have some quality prayer time doesn't sound appealing all the time when all you want is to get into your comfies and go to bed early on a Friday night. Or, maybe it is the one thing you look forward to all week long. The point is, it is much more appreciated at this point in my life than it was before I was married. And I no longer demand that God fill me with warm fuzzies at every prayer experience in order for it to be considered "good" prayer time. I am happy with a quiet whisper. Sometimes I receive no consolation at all after prayer, but at this point in my journey I know that He is still there and I don't fall apart in rejection.
And why this change? Because, that's what a family does to you. It makes you less selfish, more patient, and more persevering. Yes, there are more distractions being a married woman with 5 kids, but the opportunities to grow in grace are around every corner, present in every minute that I must give up my selfish desires for my husband and my children. And I am much more willing to work for God's consolation than I was before, because I know it is a precious gift.
And maybe it isn't just family, but rather life and all its struggles. There must be that transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood in every person, both physically and spiritually. And while the worries, responsibilities, and distrations of our older age may be more prevalent, more persistent, more pervasive than they used to be, the refinement of our souls is so much sweeter.
We were able to have praise and worship again last night and we prayed over a friend who has been struggling with a number of issues and whose birthday is coming up soon. Afterward we sat and talked about how different it is now with all of us married and busy with family and work versus when we were young and got together for prayer weekly. All of us expressed how even though there are more distractions and less prayer gatherings, we wouldn't change it for the world.
We talked about how we all would be praying and experiencing intesne, ecstatic emotions in our youth. We would be on fire for the Lord and be physically bursting with joy. Now, if we can enter into one song and truly pray it from our heart in intense concentration, we are happy.
Before we would talk about how we want to go tell the whole world about the love of God and spiritually touch every young person we met. Now, we just want to survive our days without killing our children.
Yet we wouldn't change it, or go back. Interesting. Back then, if we experienced such droughts that we would be happy just being able to enter into only one song, we would have rushed over to the victim and laid hands on them and prayed for the well to spring forth again! OK, maybe a slight exaggeration.... but still. One of the men there commented that maybe, back then, we needed that abundance of consolations from God to get us where we are today. Maybe we needed that coddling by our Father in the beginning in order to have the strength to get through the droughts of today. It's similar to the way we raise our children, from the nurturing care of infancy to making them build strength, character, and responsibility as they increase in age.
It is hard to feel that zeal going on no sleep after nursing your baby all night, or feel that peace after wrestling your child down to the ground in order to insert the medicine dropper full of antibiotics into her mouth. It is hard to sit down in loving sweetness to pray with the man whoyou are arguing with over money, time managment, household duties, or whatever issues arise in a normal marriage.
The thought of getting dressed, preparing a potluck dish, finding (and paying) a babysitter for your kids in order to go to a friend's house and have some quality prayer time doesn't sound appealing all the time when all you want is to get into your comfies and go to bed early on a Friday night. Or, maybe it is the one thing you look forward to all week long. The point is, it is much more appreciated at this point in my life than it was before I was married. And I no longer demand that God fill me with warm fuzzies at every prayer experience in order for it to be considered "good" prayer time. I am happy with a quiet whisper. Sometimes I receive no consolation at all after prayer, but at this point in my journey I know that He is still there and I don't fall apart in rejection.
And why this change? Because, that's what a family does to you. It makes you less selfish, more patient, and more persevering. Yes, there are more distractions being a married woman with 5 kids, but the opportunities to grow in grace are around every corner, present in every minute that I must give up my selfish desires for my husband and my children. And I am much more willing to work for God's consolation than I was before, because I know it is a precious gift.
And maybe it isn't just family, but rather life and all its struggles. There must be that transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood in every person, both physically and spiritually. And while the worries, responsibilities, and distrations of our older age may be more prevalent, more persistent, more pervasive than they used to be, the refinement of our souls is so much sweeter.
posted by Philothea Rose at
9:13 AM
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