My son has an abundant affinity for super heroes. It's over the top. He wakes up wanting me to be a bad guy so he can be Iron Man, or Captain America or some other masked crusader; he then proceeds to pummel, punch and yell at me until I'm adequately defeated. The intensity goes up several notches when Dad gets home. I kind of grew up like an only child so the essences of boyhood are so foreign to me, I am learning every day how differently they tick. Maybe it's more of a...tock.
I'm wondering how I can tie his media driven super hero obsession to MY hero obsession, I want to know how to help him understand that God is a super hero that can beat up all the other super heroes, that HE MADE UP super powers!!! The issue I'm running into stems from a profound statement Asher made just today. During nap time we cuddled June and sang a song and I tickled his back a little bit, then he looked at me with dense and sleepy half closed eyes as he said, "Momma, know why I don't pray? Because when I do God just doesn't talk to me. I feel frustrated and sometimes sad." You see he stopped praying with us for the most part, about six months ago, and we never knew why. We decided not to pressure him. Perhaps he is just now discovering how to articulate his thoughts and feelings, but I'm standing, jaw dropped, on a precipice of unknown here.
My first temptation was to "stage" an answered prayer, tell him to pray for something specific then do everything I can to make it happen. That's my controlling, protective, "Momma Bear" instinct coming out, but it's not a response of faith. Instead I want to have the faith to tell him to ask God for something and then wait patiently and faithfully together as we watch it come to be, but truth is...I'm too scared.
What if God decided NOT to answer him, will Asher spiral into a pit of disappointment and despair, giving up on a God he hardly knows? He's such a tender hearted, emotionally mature child in so many ways, I don't imagine him rebounding from a blow like that as easily as other children. He's not as resilient as other boys seem to be. So here I am wanting my boy to experience God speaking to him the way I have SO many times, but I still stand in fear.
All of this brought to light my own inadequacies of faith, that maybe in the back of my mind God is not actually Asher's super hero, perhaps in my mind, I am. Don't we all want to be this for our children, swooping in at the first sign of trouble, scooping them up before the are the victim of some evil genius scheme? It seems that in my hopes to teach him of a real hero, I'm making myself out to be a better one, and that is a real farce indeed.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
writer
In my mind I have a grand idea that maybe some day I might be a writer, but then most of the time fear and indignation step in front telling me I wouldn't have the drive to finish anything, and even if I did, no one would want to read it anyway. It's a tough critic, this heart of mine.
Now that I have that little barrier thrown out there in the open, I suppose I should write something, at least for the time being.
I've been caught in contemplation quite a lot lately, mostly in regard to who I am today and who I was and how alternatively different those two people are. Chatting with a friend today I was reminded that just ten years ago I had no desire to be a wife, and certainly not a stay at home mother. I wanted to do something that made me look smarter than I am, I wanted to have a string of letters behind my name that made people steep in insecurity over how great my resume must be, a statement that I was somehow better than they were. At one point I thought maybe I'd be a fashion buyer, a merchandiser buying what would be the next biggest trend. Everyone would thank me. Whatever it was that I chose to be, in my mind it had to say something, it had to have "stick it to 'em" written all over it in permanent pen.
And in many many ways, who I became says anything but that.
What I know to be true now, what I had no glimpse or glimmer of in those days past, is that who I am today is exactly who I was made to be. I have peace and joy everyday, contentment in increasing measure. What I know is that I could never be happy fighting against who it is that God made me to be. We need to stop asking God to help us follow our dream, we need to ask him, "What are you dreaming for me?" and in the same moment, with the same breath, utter "Because whatever it is, I trust you. I will do it, I will live it to the full and pursue it wildly." In this there is forward motion, peace.
This most recent year here in Peoria has been a year of stretching and growing and learning about so many things. Things of God and who He is to me, in my life, in this stage of raising little ones, expectations and living humbly. My marriage is growing to be better than it ever has before as I learn to give and give and deny myself and my temptations for expectation. I'm seeing how lax I can be in providing boundaries for my children all the while losing my own self control in my attempts to strengthen theirs. I see that there is true power not in lording over others, but in meek mannered service, in doing things for my husband and strangers that they could do for themselves and doing them joyfully.
I'm trying to listen more.
It's amazing how empowered I have felt as I do more and more for those around me without desire for reciprocity, the me that I've been looking for has found a pin hole of light and I am slowly crawling my way out of the darkness. I hope you can too.
Now that I have that little barrier thrown out there in the open, I suppose I should write something, at least for the time being.
I've been caught in contemplation quite a lot lately, mostly in regard to who I am today and who I was and how alternatively different those two people are. Chatting with a friend today I was reminded that just ten years ago I had no desire to be a wife, and certainly not a stay at home mother. I wanted to do something that made me look smarter than I am, I wanted to have a string of letters behind my name that made people steep in insecurity over how great my resume must be, a statement that I was somehow better than they were. At one point I thought maybe I'd be a fashion buyer, a merchandiser buying what would be the next biggest trend. Everyone would thank me. Whatever it was that I chose to be, in my mind it had to say something, it had to have "stick it to 'em" written all over it in permanent pen.
And in many many ways, who I became says anything but that.
What I know to be true now, what I had no glimpse or glimmer of in those days past, is that who I am today is exactly who I was made to be. I have peace and joy everyday, contentment in increasing measure. What I know is that I could never be happy fighting against who it is that God made me to be. We need to stop asking God to help us follow our dream, we need to ask him, "What are you dreaming for me?" and in the same moment, with the same breath, utter "Because whatever it is, I trust you. I will do it, I will live it to the full and pursue it wildly." In this there is forward motion, peace.
This most recent year here in Peoria has been a year of stretching and growing and learning about so many things. Things of God and who He is to me, in my life, in this stage of raising little ones, expectations and living humbly. My marriage is growing to be better than it ever has before as I learn to give and give and deny myself and my temptations for expectation. I'm seeing how lax I can be in providing boundaries for my children all the while losing my own self control in my attempts to strengthen theirs. I see that there is true power not in lording over others, but in meek mannered service, in doing things for my husband and strangers that they could do for themselves and doing them joyfully.
I'm trying to listen more.
It's amazing how empowered I have felt as I do more and more for those around me without desire for reciprocity, the me that I've been looking for has found a pin hole of light and I am slowly crawling my way out of the darkness. I hope you can too.
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