It’s time to get personal with all the talk about obedience. If you didn’t know, I’m writing a series of five posts on obedience:
Obedience, Part 1 – Turning
Obedience, Part 2 – Agreeing or Trusting?
Obedience, Part 3 – What Precedes Obedience
Obedience, Part 4 – What Follows Obedience
Obedience, Part 5 – Disobedience

“Obedience, Part Unknown” was not going to be in the series, but I’m struggling today and it’s time to share the struggle. But first, how the difficulty began; which is actually a story I love to tell.

A couple months ago I was feeling inadequate and overwhelmed in parenting, which is not at all unusual for me. However, this time things were at the point I felt something needed to be done. My seven year old daughter was saying she felt like the worst person in the world, that she hated herself, and that she wished she were dead. Fear and worry swooped in to tell me it was my fault for being a perfectionist, and that not having the right solution would result in lifelong negative consequences.

As my mind began to spin up a tornado and my soul began to clench in fear, the Holy Spirit threw me a rope. He reminded me that I didn’t have to descend into despair, and He also informed me that I was not strong enough on my own to fight that battle. He instructed me to reach out to my friends for prayer, and so by God’s grace and praying friends I made the journey over the next 24 hours from “this is big and I can’t solve it and that’s bad” to “God loves my daughter even more than I do and He knows exactly what she needs.” In my heart I sensed that God was asking me to wait on Him. It was not time to act, it was time to trust, and then from the quiet of trust, to listen. This was all His work, not mine. I simply responded.

Within a day or two of this, my husband and I had our weekly “M&P,” which is a time we spend after the kids are in bed talking about either our marriage or parenting. We prayed and I shared my concern about our daughter, and then we had the most wonderful conversation about our lives being too full. There is absolutely no explanation for it being wonderful except that God showed up. Generally, conversations about how we spend our time have been anything but wonderful. Weekends have been the crucible of our marriage because unplanned time sends us in opposite directions: my husband to relaxing and entertainment, and me to chores and activities. But throughout this conversation we expressed ourselves well, we heard each other well, and we reached the same conclusion: our life is too full and God is calling us to slow down.

Typically my response to any sort of conclusion is to take action. Time to buy a car? Ok, let’s go get one tomorrow. Time to plan a birthday party? I’ll start the guest and supply lists right now. But I experienced this calling from God as if a divine Parent was truly in charge. I didn’t feel the need to make it happen. My husband and I both agreed that we were to slow down our lives, but we didn’t know how. We even agreed that if we were to sit down with the intent to discuss our schedule, two things could happen: 1) no individual item would ever make the cut, because each one had been chosen for a good reason in the first place (how could we cancel date night, dinner with friends, or art lessons for the kids?), and 2) if we did actually find something to cut, our lists would be opposite: what he wanted to cut would be what I wanted to keep, and vice versa.

So here we sat, unexpectedly in peace and agreement, waiting for God to reveal what He had in mind for us. Some weeks later as I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water, the thought came to me that we could decide on our schedule based on what we know God has called us to. In other words, those things in our life we know He has directed us to do would remain, and everything else would get cut. I tucked that thought away for later, and through unanticipated circumstances we found ourselves at home alone on a Saturday morning for two hours. I suggested we talk more about God’s plan for our time, and my husband reservedly agreed. Again we experienced the same oneness of mind as our previous conversation, and we felt God was asking us to lay aside those things that He had not called us to do. (Our focus was the time between school and bedtime, so we were not talking about changes to my husband’s work schedule, or to time commitments in the first part of the day).

As we conversed over the next couple of weeks, we identified three things we knew God had clearly called us to, and we decided it was time to tell the kids our plan and start eliminating everything else from our evening schedule. Previous to these changes, we were out of the house five nights a week on average. And this was after saying no to quite a few opportunities. We communicated with our extended family – who are our primary babysitters – that we would be making changes, and were blessed to have their support. We started to get excited about more evenings at home as a family, and maybe the option to invite people for dinner occasionally – something we had not been able to do for some time. Our focus was on keeping things off the calendar, so dinner invitations would be more spontaneous – not planned weeks ahead.

So, that’s the story. We basically started following this new calling at the beginning of January, which felt very fitting. Here we are a few weeks in, and it’s getting hard. At first it was a relief, even a joy, to look at the empty calendar, knowing that we were right where God wanted us to be, and that we didn’t have to always be going here and there. Then the social invitations started coming in. Last weekend we had three social invitations on Saturday evening. My stress level went up as we tried to decide which was the most important, whether we should do any at all, how late we could respond to the invitations without being thoughtless toward the hosts, and so on. I was texting people, feeling torn and overwhelmed. Part of me wanted to go ahead and respond with Yes to two of the invitations, as they would fit together nicely. Part of me thought we should pick one. Part of me wanted to say no to all of them. And this uncertainty was a huge energy drain. I was stressed, wanting to keep each of my family members happy and also (to be completely honest) keep up good impressions with the friends who had invited us. We ended up choosing one event, which kept us up late, and in the end I felt overextended and emotionally exhausted (more from the decision making than the event, which seems ridiculous).

So how do I navigate this? We’re not trying to completely eliminate our social life, but we are trying to slow it down. And although I am absolutely certain of God’s calling to a quieter schedule, I am not as sure how to make the individual decisions. We’ve been reading a new book by Jefferson Bethke titled “To Hell with the Hustle: Reclaiming Your Life in an Overworked, Overspent and Overconnected World.” It explores the ways life has changed in the last two hundred years with cars, electric lights, worldwide time zones, and all the things that enable us to have the very full lives we have today. It has been eyeopening, and an encouraging read as it echoes the heart calling God has given us for this season.

And yet I still don’t know what I’m doing. Today school was cancelled because of snow. I decided to have a fun day with my girls, and we each picked something to do: bake cookies, make cereal necklaces, and dance along with kid song videos. I also took my first-grader on a mommy-daughter date because she has been asking for some time alone with me. Then I started getting social invitations. Four, to be exact, all before 1:00 (and there may still be more to come?). And I like them all. What’s not to love about sledding and lunch and playdates? Each time I agonize. The kids would love to do it. It would be good to get out of the house. But here’s the real kicker. I realized as I responded No to each one that there may be a cost to this obedience. Friendships only last when you invest in them. If we are going to be centered at home, we are essentially tightening our circle, and some relationships may be lost. If I am investing more time at home, the obvious flip side is that I’m investing less time outside the home. How can I say no to the meal trains, the mom nights, the potlucks and sledding invitations, the dinner invitations, the birthday parties, the playdates at the park?

And then I pause for a moment right in the middle of this thought and realize how blessed I am! What an incredibly warm and wonderful place to be – surrounded by friends I admire and cherish, who regularly invite me into their activities and their homes. I have a story for another day about hungering for friendship, and by God’s grace here I am drowning in it.

But back to my original thought. What to do? I must say no. I am called to say no. As Bethke says in the aforementioned book, “If you’re not saying no to good things, you’re probably not saying no enough.” This is uncomfortable. But despite the discomfort I can be grateful, because all is good. The calling to slowness is good. The friendships are good. There is nothing bad here, but there is a calling. There is a culling. There is a cost. In all of it I am blessed. I am blessed to have a loving Father who cares enough to orchestrate the details of my life. I am blessed to be surrounded by a loving community of friends and family. I am also blessed to discover the freedom that comes with the word No. 

Is it painful? Yes. Is it also peaceful? Yes. Is there a cost? Yes. Do I know what the cost will be? No. Am I called to obedience? Yes. Can I be obedient on my own? No. It is all the work of God, from start to finish. In his book Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis points out that “Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, ‘Take up your Cross” – in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light.’ He means both.” So here I am, feeling peaceful and blessed, and simultaneously uncomfortable and sad. God is asking me to do something hard, but the truth is that He does all the hard  stuff. I just turn toward Him in obedience.

Today the photo for my post is a picture of my husband and me with our older daughter when she was about a week old. The first time I looked at this picture, God impressed an image on my mind that still comes to me every time I see it. In the picture you can see our daughter, with my arm around her, and my husband’s arms around both of us. In my mind’s eye God showed me His arms as another Person around all of us. Here we are seven years later, facing new challenges, but we are still held. And being held is worth fighting for. It’s worth obedience, even knowing it comes with discomfort and loss and the unknown.