The Day the Pedestal Shattered

Before I start my story, I must set the stage. In our church of less than 200 people, there are about two children under the age of 13--3 of whom are my own. Which is to say, there aren't a lot of children.

There is a couple from another country with one 4-year-old daughter--a year younger than my Cuddlebug. They are here seeking legal residency, learning the language, and blessing us with their sweet friendship. With his strong sense of family values, Christian discretion and business management, and her affable personality and incredibly articulate way (she knows more about the structure of my language than I do do I), our United States will most certainly be better with them than without.

But anyway...

For many months my new friend has been very generous with her praise about my girls.

Now, let me pause here and interject something that the Lord has been teaching me. For a few years I have been watching the fruit of too many a friend's labor with their children fall from the proverbial tree and be left to rot on the ground to a putrid, unspeakable, unrecognizable stench--so to speak.

I see God working in ironies. Women who once stood unbiblically firm on their convictions about dress codes, now find their children running around town only half-dressed. Mothers who taught others--in no uncertain terms--that children were to be held in submission until they arrived at the "Biblical age of accountability--twenty" spent the two years between that and the societal standard of eighteen being grieved, if not embarrassed, by their child's drunken revelries and pictures to prove it shamelessly posted all over the blogosphere.

Parents quietly despise the philosophy of home education and send their children to a "good" school because they are deceived pleased with the outside of the cup; it sure is pretty! But they don't see--or perhaps just don't perceive--the poorly-veiled undercurrent of corrupt culture that I can sense when I bump into their children's little blogs.

All of this, and more, makes me very wary to admit to myself or others that my children are, indeed, a pretty incredible threesome. They are kind. They are considerate. They are compassionate and merciful. They aren't quick to run to trouble. They aren't distracted from the loveliness of Jesus by the debauchery of anything on the Disney Channel after 3 p.m.

They cover themselves. More importantly, they know why they cover themselves. They fight the good fight against the curiousity of the flesh, and avert their eyes from the gruesome pictures that attempt to assault their innocence in the grocery store check-out...or the public library. When they hear what passes for music in this society, one daughter expresses her dislike by calling it, "out of tune."

They don't tease. They don't mock. They don't cuss. They are lovely, lovely girls.

*deep breath*

And here's where I share how I can say that without being the "proud" whom the Lord will resist. (James 4:6) It is all--all by His grace. It is all to His glory! But He didn't just bless me with good girls. And let's be sure to understand that He didn't just give my girls naturally-perfect parents. Because--believe you me--if they weren't so loyal to the 5th commandment, they would tell you stories!

What He did--what He is doing--is accomplishing what He promised in His beautiful, life-breathing Word.

To pretend otherwise would be--has been--to embrace a false sense of humility as if the work being accomplished here was to my credit.

And to hide this light under a bushel would be to hinder a lost world from knowing what is possible with God.

And to protect myself from future ridicule--you know, in case it all goes the way I've witnessed in other families--is to be parenting in disbelief. I haven't believed that He wills to do what He has said.

But glory to God, here is what He has done so far...

He has taken and radically transformed (Ezekiel 11:19-20, 2Cor 5:17) two former FM radio disc-jockeys whose most every thought for the first years of their marriage was on money and fame and power. Trash talk. Innuendo. Coarse joking. Mocking. Greed.

And the music. Oh, don't even get this classical-music-snob-who-sings-with-an-Early-Music-ensemble started on the irony of the music that we perpetrated on the public! The manipulation that Husband accomplished on his audience as a programmer! The driving, mind-numbing, lust-enticing garbage that I played for people as they prepared for the first hours of their day, when they would have done well to have been feasting on God's Word.

See how God works in ironies? Isn't He glooooooorious?

Well, back to my story.

So this new woman is impressed with my children. I've asked that she not be, but she doesn't listen to me. And then, this morning after service, my young ones and another were playing a game in which the main objective in the moment came to be...to play at the specific exclusion of the new girl from another country. I'll call her Jane.

And my little ones, especially 5-year-old Cuddlebug, who has been pinned by Jane with the sweetest title of, "Mi Amigita," saw what was happening and politely walked away from this selfish kind of play. They remembered that Jane had no siblings of her own in which to seek solace. They knew that Jane considered Cuddlebug her best friend. They remembered Mommy's favorite verse,

Look not every man on his own things,
but every man also on the things of others.
Philippians 2:4

And they knew what they should do. They went to Jane and played with her. And she was blessed.

No, actually. They didn't.

They behaved just as young children will in their natural state. Because evil is the default setting of the human condition, you know. Even believing children lack the wisdom of experience and study to objectively see a situation in which their unGodly joy is being made full by a popular girl's attention. And even if...they forget quickly and easily enough; I liken it to an 8 megabyte memory in a 1 gigabyte world.

And then, there was the added complication of Mommy being too busy in conversation to recognize the need for an on-the-spot correction.

And so Mommy...uh...I...later called our new friend and apologized profusely, inviting myself over to allow Cuddlebug and Dumpling to apologize too. But she very sweetly didn't see the need--because she's so very gracious that way.

So, to avoid opening the closed wounds of a 4-year old who doesn't seem to remember the moment, I deferred to my friend's wishes. But we left it with my assurance that the lesson had been discerned and discussed with the girls, and with the help of God, would not happen that way ever again.

And I encouraged her to use the episode to teach Jane that our trust must be only in Jesus. Even nice little Cuddlebug, a.k.a. "my little friend" will let her down. But Jesus never will. Matthew 28:20, Hebrews 13:5

And so, my little ones walk through another day of being trained up in the way they should go with the expectation assurance that when they are old, they will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

Because truly, the yoke of that guilt they felt when it was explained what they had done to Jane was so much heavier Matthew 11:30 than that of the confession to God that brought forgiveness and cleansing. 1John 1:9

And now they are free. John 8:36 Truly free.