Coach's CornerJuly 2013
I would like to share with you here a very personal treasure of ours. It came at great cost but became one of the most life giving secrets in our family. (I have taught my girls for years to be careful with whom they share their treasures and special thoughts of the heart because sometimes people take those beautiful treasures and don’t value them, but rather hurt the one sharing those thoughts. I remind myself of that as I share this pearl of great price with you — but I feel I must. God gave it to us, and if it helps you, then I must share it.)
Early in my walk with God, while in Paraguay, I was praying about forgiving those that had hurt me in my past. In that prayer, He showed me a family that I had not forgiven for some event during my college days. After much examination, I realized that their action had actually led me to a time of prayer and to a closer relationship with Christ. I was mad at them for something that turned out to be my greatest blessing ever.
In praying for our children, even before they were born, we often asked God to make them worshippers of the Lamb that was slain for our sins. We didn’t pray so much that they would be good since we knew that all are sinners (Romans 3:23), and we knew that we, their parents, were sinners (who were so grateful to have a Savior). I remember praying that they would bring God glory, and how hard it was not to try to dictate to Him what exactly that meant. Trusting Him to take the precious life He placed in our hands and use that life any way He saw fit was sometimes quite hard. We knew that for our girls to be worshippers of the Lamb, they would have to go through hard things in this life. This priceless gift of worship is often given to us wrapped in very unpleasant wrappings.
When one of our girls had vision problems and was diagnosed as having dyslexia, we began to understand how priceless gifts can come with unpleasant wrappings. The first thing we did, was to do everything humanly possible to fix the problem. We began vision therapy and glasses at age 3. Later, there was surgery on a crossing eye, more vision therapy, hours of tutoring — basically, all we could possibly do on our part to help our child be all that God created her to be.
This daughter did all that was humanly possible as well. She studied hours on end just to be able to spell correctly the science and language vocabulary — only to reverse letters and still get the grade deducted. Occasionally, she had teachers that understood, but when that went in her favor, the oral reading did not. The tears and prayers that we all cried and prayed over this persistent torture seemed to go unanswered until we stumbled onto the secret (that God shared openly) in (I Thes. 5:18) In everything give thanks.
I finally told this child (and we have done it with each child and ourselves since that time — when we have the courage and wisdom to remember this secret) that even if we don’t feel like thanking God, do it anyway. She began by telling God truthfully that she did not feel thankful, but she thanked Him anyway. I would love to tell you that the problem went away. But it didn’t. What I am pleased to tell you is that this child began to feel better about her strengths and less negative about this "weakness".
Through this, God gave her a close dependency upon Him to get her through each day at school. She was weak enough to lean hard on her Savior (not mine, but hers), and she became strong enough to turn towards the needs of others as well. She has learned to take care of her own needs and has learned much about the value Christ has place on her life, and at the same time can look towards the needs of others in such a way that has given her the insight to become an excellent counselor of kids in need. Our prayers were answered with a resounding "no" to taking away the difficulty but a resonating "yes" to being a vessel that glorifies Him.
Whenever we have had other hard things happen as we raised our kids, we prayed hard and took every possible step to correct the struggle. We have learned that when we began to thank our loving Father, who works all things for good for those that love Him (Romans 8:28), we saw His hand transforming those tough areas into beautiful jeweled traits that He can use to make mere clay into a vessel that brings glory to His name.