It’s a tricky balance this speaking up for what you believe on a public forum.
This verse is about appropriate application – NOT name calling – and is often my decider on whether to get involved or not. (Usually not)
“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”
You might just as easily say “do not hang your fragile crystal in a hurricane and expect it back intact”.
I have been torn to pieces in the past… unnecessarily because I didn’t understand/apply this proverb.
It isn’t of course a stand-alone principle- there are always other things to consider… like this:
“Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.”
But even that is clarifying… the reverse can be a trap.
I’ve said before how I love being around older couples who have been married and in love for a long time because they teach without even being aware that they do.
A bubble in my memory Sequestered in my mind Tonight was burst unbidden A jail break from time I didn’t know it held me So bound up in its grasp Until it burst unbidden This piece of jagged past And now a smile – old pain released A sadness buried long Finally not seventeen The broken record – gone!
“Sowing judgement for judgement” is a phrase a friend used in conversation many years ago. It’s one I’ve thought of a great many times since then – when I either watch or find myself in situations where that is the temptation. You know the ones… Where instead of going a distance beside the other, to discover what they think and why, we arc against something and often never are aware that all we’ve done is mirror judgement back. Love when what seems like a throwaway comment impacts both thought and action so deeply.
Today marks the sixth anniversary of the longest day of our lives. Well, it actually began a few days before but extended for 22 more from this point on, while a little life hung in the balance and the rest of us held our breath.
I am not the centre of this story, but his life in many ways has been at the core of mine.
The time from when we knew he was on the way, till the time we said goodbye, has been like a BC – AD division of history in my life. There is Before Elijah and After Elijah. So significant it has been. And due to his coming and passing, so much in my heart and life changed. One night I wrote a list six pages long of areas of my heart and thoughts that had been impacted by this season. I only stopped writing because I was too tired to continue.
I think more about him in this month of February, but there isn’t a day that I don’t think of him at all.
That long long day was a succession of phone calls and drives to KEMH, tension, precious moments, the continuation of normal, exhaustion and tears.
And it was followed by a much much longer night. A night which is not mine to tell but in which I was deeply enmeshed and which was mostly invisible to almost all around. A night which lasted years…
Some of you are my Facebook friends because of contact made around this time six years ago… And others or you are still my friends because of the love and care expressed through that time. I feared judgement and we received grace. I expected rejection and we got loved. I still have all the emails in a folder… A great many of the stories shared were different situations but of people’s greatest pain and have lodged in my heart as the most significant kind of sharing – and like the little box of Elijah memories under our bed, I cannot open the email file – I know it is there and i treasure it all.
The story isn’t finished, I don’t know when it will be, or even if. But for me there has been a great healing by a Gentle Friend who has walked beside in every moment.
Before Elijah was born I had a sense of stepping off a precipice. This impression came to me as I was giving birth to Miss Taryn who was three months old when Elijah was born. The precipice impression was as gripping to me as the birth process happening at the time. Tarri was posterior, the doc had commented that it was as though my body had forgotten it had done this before (7 year gap) and the pain was more like a first than a seventh delivery. I was totally loony on the gas but felt Gods presence acutely. With this impression of the precipice came the correlation to birth… That I had no option but to trust in time passing, in the process and in those caring for me… and the God who sees, cares, comforts and walks beside. In going over the precipice I had no option but to trust in those same things.
So I did.
Some years later I had another impression. This time, of having been set gently down. I had indeed gone over that precipice, but like the eagle, He had swept in under me and set me so gently down that I didn’t even know when it had happened.
Just that He had.
And so we remember The presence and passing Of a little life Who mattered One through whom We grew and were changed One who Forever will be Part of the fabric Of our family
Marriage-purity-sex-family are all topics close to my heart and ones on which I’ve spent much time so when I read the Scriptures I’m always on the lookout for deeper understandings on these topics. I’ve read way too many books on these topics and in amongst them I have read a number of Christian teachers say that a wife should never withhold herself from sex and I have seen women damaged and part-way to deranged from their efforts to live out such teaching.
There was a post in a group for big families about “mother guilt”… I wrote this post there but thought I’d share it here too as I think it applies no matter whether we have 1 child or 13…
When we had our 6th I spoke to our obstetrician who was an older father of 6 and said “how can we be sure we will be able to give each of our kids what they really need from us?”. He put his pen down and leaned back in his chair smiling and slightly shaking his head… I KNEW he understood my question. I don’t remember everything he said but one of the things was that not everything our kids need has to come from US as their parents. That slightly discomforted me because in essence I really WANTED to be the sun in our kids worlds… (another issue to work on) but the very next morning as I went to wake kids for school, there was the 3 yo in bed with the 7 yo being read a story. And I understood what the Dr had said – and was happy about it.
His other answers would have been from the perspective of an older parent along the lines of… our kids (like us) have their whole lives to fill. To learn, to grow, to experience. We don’t need to pack it all into their childhoods. And not everything we want to give are the same as what they actually NEED…
And to that I would now add: – concentrate on what they need, not on what we want, or even on what we think they want – and we will find MUCH less to feel guilty about. Love, safety, security – our best to deliver a whole and rounded life… these are their true needs…
– recognise the difference between guilt and grief. Guilt implies that there is something we could have or should have done differently. Guilt implies wrongdoing or harm caused. If something is true guilt – we can usually do something about it… change the scenario, apologise, restore with he person we harmed… But no child is harmed by lack of luxury and these are so often the things we feel ‘guilty’ over.
– Looking back there’s not a lot I feel *guilty of (have tried to keep short records with our kids – not because I’ve done it all perfectly – and still talking to them about things now they’re nearly all grown up), but there are a number of things I feel a measure of ‘grief’ over. Sadness for a few of life’s ‘optionals’ that we just couldn’t do because of time or money or prioritization restraints… and that’s OK. Guilt is debilitating – particularly false guilt . Its like continually feeling compelled to run into a rock wall as though you should be able to run through it when you cannot. Grief or sadness IS still sad, its a statement of how it is, but it doesn’t bruise OR abuse us in the same way.
– every single family, big or small has its own set of restrictions. We live much more content and peacefully when we accept whatever our OWN sets of restrictions and benefits are.
PS Date: 18 June 2020 My understanding of the way I mothered has grown over the last 6 years since writing this and apart from rewriting the whole thing – just want to add a couple of things. Guilt is something Jesus paid to take off my shoulders so in the last 6 years as I’ve come to understand some things differently, I have indeed had washes and waves come over me as I see things I wish I’d done different if only I’d understood then. The stunning thing about His love though is that even while the retrospective realisations are true – He also takes the these burdens off me as I turn each of those things… and the kids themselves with all the results and effects to Him for His care. I’ve known some fresher sorrows, but He calls me to trust Him.
Perspectives
and misunderstandings are fascinating. I used to say regularly at bedtime to
one of our boys when they were little “I love you to bits”. One night
he looked so sad so I paused at his door and he said “Mummy, why do you
only love me two bits?”
It’s not just what we say,
it’s how we get heard, and how we get heard depends only partially on what we
say.
