LIVING IN THE PAST LANE

 

If you were guessing what this picture is before you looked at the one below, you’d probably guess it to be a beginner’s knitting project…or someone’s worn gold carpet. LOL This sunflower came up from one of the seeds that we feed the little wild birds in our back yard. When I first saw the plant it had the personality of a cocklebur and I started to hoe it down. I’m glad I didn’t because….

I learned something from our lone sunflower that I didn’t know.  I’ve never watched a sunflower grow from day-to-day, but we found out that each sunflower seed coming on has its own little flower. That’s what this is a picture of.  I set the digital camera on ‘portrait’ and got up in its face (lol)  and took a picture so the little flowerets would show up.

 

There’s something of God’s creation to learn every day! This family of sunflower seeds is like the human family. As we grow older, we wilt and fade away (die) and little ones (the greats and the great greats) are born into the family to take our place.

 

While this is all happening, it all seems like slow motion to us but as we get older, we can see that it happened very fast. The Bible tells us this but we seem to just read it and don’t think too much about it…until later.

 

James 4:14 “…What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

 

Job 7:6 “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle.”

Since our life span is so fleeting…we should be the very best influence to our families that we can possibly be, but that should be the secondary motive. The first should be our desire to be pleasing to God and then we will satisfy the secondary……..



     

 

WHAT WERE WE THINKING?

 

When Wendell was 5 1/2 and Cara Lynn 3 1/2, Bobby and I decided that I needed to go to college and get a degree. So I decided my major (English and Literature, my loves since high-school)  and went and enrolled for the summer term.

We didn’t have to have a baby sitter because Bobby kept them all summer himself. The sitter situation was going to have to be for Cara Lynn…when the fall semester started. He took them to the barber shop every morning and it worked out fine. That summer was good for them. They have memories that are very special to them, that they would not have had if I had not started back to school.

Bobby took them to the store next to the shop and had the butcher (his uncle owned the store) cut them each a piece of bacon and he put strings on it for them, and they went out behind the store and barber shop and ‘crawdad fished’. Bobby said they had crawdads running all over that barber shop! 🙂 They still talked about that summer after they were grown.

But that is as far as God let it go. That fall after Wendell started to school, and before I enrolled for the fall semester… he woke up one morning and his stomach was very swollen. We took him to the doctor and they ran tests on him and a couple of days later we heard the bad news. He had nephritis. We were devastated! This is a disease of the kidneys and the body loses its protein into the urine as waste. So there was a period of time that Wendell didn’t grow. (He made up for it later. LOL )
The doctor told us that it was in the acute stage and if it went into the chronic stage that he would not live but about 6 more years. He had to stay in bed for 3 months…and that was the end of my college career, which was a bad idea to begin with.

Wendell took a ton of penicillin (for about a year and a half) and recovered completely. During the three months of being bedfast, Cara Lynn would stand his toy soldiers up on the end of his bed and he would shoot them off with his little gun. She would go stack them back up for him to shoot down again.

When a family really wants to put God first and take the best care of their family…and are ignorant in how to go about it….God knows how to step in and take charge of the situation….and I am so glad He does. Wendell’s illness turned out to be a great blessing over time, like so many other unpleasant things that have happened!

We knew that a mother needs to be home with her children, and that children definitely need a full time mother, but after seeing results of some families, we know it even better now.
Bobby told me that some mothers would not have let that illness of their child stop them from pursuing what they wanted to do. How can that be? What they don’t realize and what I didn’t realize is, that in doing such, we are trading pure gold for flimsy tinsel. That is not a good trade off.
That is why I feel so strongly about writing about the home and family. I’d rather our children grow up faithful to God and putting Him first in their lives, with fond memories of their mother being about them…than to have all the degrees and money this world can offer. I don’t know what we were thinking at that time. I am so ashamed that I ever even wanted to do that and it is very hard to admit. I am glad they had that summer with their dad though.

LATE NOTE: When I told Bobby that I was writing about this and we were discussing it, he said we were not going to have a baby-sitter for our little girl. He was going to keep her with him instead of doing that. Well…I love and appreciate him for that but even that wasn’t what God wanted for our family, evidently. I am thankful!

ADVICE FOR PREACHER'S WIVES, ELDER'S WIVES... AND ALL WIVES.

Because we saw so many come and go through the years, I was asked to share advice that would be beneficial for preacher's wives and others, so I thought it through and decided I could do this.  The reason the lady asked me to write this is that, we have had a larger turnover than usual of preachers in the congregation where we worship, due to hiring several first time preachers and they eventually moving on to greater opportunities. Our congregation served as a "training ground" for many years. During 13 years of that time, my husband served as an elder in the congregation, along with two other men. Since then things have happened including the death of one that caused the congregation to not have a plurality of qualified men.

 I thought of 6 important things and I hope you will find it beneficial to your life. Much of this would  apply to all of us wives.

       1. First of all, it is a mistake to teach your children that: "We have to be careful to always be good examples because...People watch us more closely...You are preacher's (or elder's) children...We are looked up to more because we are the preacher's family or elder's family...We are supposed to be better examples ...etc., etc." Rather, teach them: "We are careful to be good examples because we are Christians and we belong to Christ." We have the power to cause them to feel it is a either a burden or a privilege to be 'preacher's kids' or 'elder's kids'.

2. Do not feel like you have to be hostess to every bridal or baby shower or house-warming in the community or even in the church family. Share in these good deeds if you want to, but do not over-burden yourself to the detriment of your own family or your own spirituality. We all need time to meditate to keep our spiritual health up to what God expects of us. We need time to ourselves often...often enough that when that time is occasionally interrupted (as it will be) it will not affect us and make us feel 'used'. Feeling used is not conducive to good spiritual and mental health.

3. It is unwise to use your Christian sisters, no matter how close you are to them, as a sounding board or for getting things off your chest when it concerns your husband. When you feel as if you must talk to someone, take a prayer break (a long one) and talk to God about it. Do not tell your husband's faults, no matter how minor, to anyone in the church. This can cause a weakening of his influence as a preacher and as a fellow Christian, and oh! How we need our influence. Our influence as Christians is badly needed in this world and when destroyed, either by ourselves or by others, is hard to be acquired again.

4. Peer-pressure: It is out there...and it is real! If your children are small, you still have a head-start of peer pressure. Share your faith and talk about God's Word often. Instill it in their little hearts until it becomes a part of them. If a child of faithful Christian parents does not have a faith of his own by the time he is seven or eight years old, that child has been failed up to that point. These are the moldable years and children of preachers and future elders and deacons are not just automatically going to grow up loving and serving God. They have to be tenderly nourished up in the Lord just as any other Christian's children do. This takes time, patience and an "unhurried atmosphere".

5. Anything you do in the line of church work or for the brethren personally, let it be done in love (remembering it is also for the Lord) and not because you are the preacher's wife. If you do any good work simply because you are the preacher's wife and believe it is expected of you, you will feel burdened and it will probably show up in your attitude and in little remarks you may make to your family. Then you will be back to number one above.

6. Above all, love God and love your children. Abundantly! Sometimes a preacher's family may feel that because their hearts are filled with so much love for people and their time occupied with helping people, that their children will just automatically feel that love and feel secure. But they need to be shown that love personally in their own right. Charity (love) begins at home and overflows into the lives of people outside that home...not the other way around. So love your little ones while they are growing up. Let them know beyond a doubt that they are loved and respected as individuals in the family. They will grow up having confidence and feeling secure.     -Edna L. Ingram