A Mother's Perspective

Today we want to share with you a message from Josh's mom, Susan. This is a beautiful word for all of us, to encourage us as we receive the pain God allows into our lives, to be reminded of His perfect parent's heart for each one of us. 

-Andrea

  The day had come that our children and grandchildren, Josh, Andrea, Charis, Ryden, Brooklynn, and Hudson embarked on their cross-country journey in their RV, Green Pastures. It was a mixture of emotions on my part - joy and excitement for them; sadness, concern and selfishness on my part because I knew how much I would miss them Yet, what is a parent to do?  So off they went on their adventure. Then come the phone calls and texts - "Pray. The transmission died," and more and more vehicle problems and breakdowns. Lord, what is going on?  I was ready to rent a truck and go pick them up and bring them home - a mother's protective heart - but our Lord had a different plan. God used His people to rally together as a support for them; a revealing of how much Josh and Andrea are loved by others. It reminded me of the story of "It's a Wonderful Life." Yet, my heart yearned to rescue them from all of these trying things. Lord, what would you have me do to protect them from all of the suffering and hard times facing them?

When our children were young, we read a devotional to them about a cocoon, never realizing the impact it would have on our parenting. The devotional describes a man watching an Emperor moth struggling incredibly hard to break free from the silk threads that imprisoned it. As he watched the struggle, his heart ached as he viewed this life fighting to survive. Then, no longer wanting to watch it wrestle with its circumstances, he took a razor and tenderly cut the cocoon open and the Emperor moth emerged. As he eagerly awaited for the majestic wings to open and reveal their beauty, it never occurred. The poor creature’s beautiful wings never opened up – in fact, it began to shrivel, and shortly afterwards, the majestic Emperor moth died.

There is a precious truth in this story that I will share in a moment. Many of you know that our family has experienced numerous hard losses, illnesses, the death of our beloved daughter, and other difficult struggles in our lives. Yet through it all, we do see God’s severe mercies in amazing, but hard ways. It has drawn all of us closer to our King Jesus and to one another. More on this subject another time.

What I want to share from a parent’s perspective, is that we have had to watch each one of our children and grandchildren struggle with pain, hurt, fear, betrayal, and many more hard issues. It is the hardest thing, as a parent, to look into your children’s eyes and see the pain in them. It is as if someone plunges a knife into your own heart. Many, many times I have begged the Lord to put their affliction and pain on me – take it away from them. It is a good “mom” prayer, but a very selfish prayer.

One day I remembered the cocoon story, and realized what I was praying was for God to cut the “cocoon” of their circumstances. If God cuts their “cocoon”, then what would they become? Certainly not the men and women of God they are- and the ones they will become through all of their suffering. You see, in the cocoon is a God shaped struggle to get the juices flowing into the moth’s wings and give it the strength it needs to soar. Without that struggle, it died. Isaiah 30:20 states, “And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.” We need bread and water to survive, so He is telling us that we need adversity and affliction to survive and see our Jesus. He does not hide Himself from us in these times – or from our children – these difficulties are times when they DO see Him. These are His severe mercies.

We have to ask ourselves as parents, what do we want for our children? To be shriveled up and spiritually dying, and just existing, or do we want their wings to open up so they can fly and reveal the majesty of Jesus Christ? It sounds like a simple answer, but are we really willing to allow God to do the work in them that He sees is necessary for their character? I Samuel 19:11 states, “Saul also sent messengers unto David’s house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning.” "This was the beginning of a very unhappy time in David’s life, a dark and lonely experience which nevertheless played a tremendous part in the making of his character” (Alan Redpath, “The Making of a Man of God”). We know the end of David’s story, but he did not. We have to realize that life springs out of that cocoon, just as beauty springs out of all of our sufferings. Our Lord sees the “end” of each of our stories, and for that I am thankful.

-Susan