Responsibility Test

by Beth Johnson


I can only figure that summer vacations were not invented by parents, no parent would willingly invite into their life ominous, structureless time.   I've been trying to get my children on a schedule during their summer vacation, you know, everyone gets up, eats breakfast, prays, reads the Bible, practices their verses, cleans their plates, and then they can go about their diversions, BUT everyday we need to create something, build something, put away something, and tell something.  We take 3 weeks off from home school every year in the summer, so it's short and sweet.  Thank goodness because I don't like all this 'spare time', aimless wandering, idleness, and mostly the unknown.  What will time off look like?    Right now I am watching the time tick by as my kids are at the next door neighbor's watching a movie in the middle of the day.  There was a time when I would have marched over to their house and kindly escorted my easily distracted children back home.  Because as you know, we don't spend time with people watching something else, we spend time with the living people.  God created us to interact with each other, and my kids would smile at me and say, "we know."  But the heat has upped the ante on my rules and it's just too hot to play, think, speak, or move.  So, I'm letting this one slide.  I like order but tire easily with people who don't like to adhere to what I think order looks like.  What I am wanting from this break is to see what my children want to do with their free-time.  What is it that they seek?  Who do they cling to?  Where do they go?  What are they talking about?  I want to be able to give them the resources they need to rest.  But when I realize where their first inclination to go is to be with other people and do whatever they are doing I end up confused.  How do I challenge them to create, dream, build, you know, everything kids are made for.  We were made for...

There is much talk about living out what God has made you for.  Being your calling.  What does this look like when you have 4 loads of laundry to fold, the dog is eating the contents of the toilet, the lonely child is in her room weeping, and the demanding child is doing just that, demanding.  What am I called to? When Motherhood looks like this, the calling gets all fuzzy and before you know it you are begrudging your duty.  I find myself viewing my children as burdens instead of the image-bearers and Spirit-vessels that God intends for them to be.  Then I hear the Spirit ask me to enter into His rest, but I've already explained how much I do not like to rest.  Rest means so many 'bad' things for me.  Just show me what job I can do, and I can do it, point me in the right direction.  Rest means I am going to wake up and the storm will be raging and I will not have prepared for it.  Essentially, unbelief, I don't believe that if I shut off the light He's got it covered.  Can He do anything?  Yes.  Did he make you?  Yes.  Does he have complete authority?  Yes.  Yet, I don't like to stop for just an afternoon and let the dishes pile up because I am going to have to clean that up later speech.   "Therefore while the promise of entering into His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. " Hebrews 4:1  Okay, this verse just screams responsibility to me, not rest.  I have got to rest because there is a cut off valve somewhere that's going to shut off and I might run out of something.  And there is a possibility that I'm not going to reach what I am supposed to be going toward.  You can feel my tension, I'm sure of it, because you might be like me and just think if you are trying hard enough it must just work out.  I am not prepared for this rest command whatsoever.  Before  I self destruct I quickly jump forward to the last verse in the chapter, "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."  Sound better?  Yes, now I read the in between parts.  But in order to have this confidence you have to rest.  Not worry, not give into lies, not listen to panic, and not self preservation.  Verse 11, "Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall,"  and the falling be to disobedience.  You have to want this rest, there is no half way here, both feet in, are you going to let Him have the keys? If you are heavy with child, running with a toddler who just figured out how his legs work, dealing with the drama of a preschooler, or the melancholy of a pre-teen girl you know the need to believe that He has a place of rest for you.  That He has called you to this, the testing of your faith, the proof of who you really are as you work endlessly because He has allowed you to be someone's Mother.  There is no chance in that, He wrote the DNA, and He will provide for your rest.   Read the whole chapter, and the one prior, and the one after and rest while you do.