I was g-chatting with daughter Katy yesterday morning. This is how it went…
Katy: Thanks for sending your Zambia itinerary! Turns out I may be traveling at the same time for work.
Me: Oh! Fun! Where?
Katy: Kabul.
Me: WHATTTT????!!! As in Kabul Afghanistan?
Katy: And this is why I told you over g-chat…to preserve my ear-drums.
We’ve made a boat-load of mistakes as parents. Big ones, little ones, and ones we laugh at in retrospect, like the time John accidentally gave Maggie Ipecac instead of cough medicine in the middle of the night and wondered why she kept throwing up.
But one that looms large in my mind was when we let our then eighteen year old daughter, Maggie, graduate early from high school and go to live with a mission organization in Kibera – a terrible slum in Nairobi.
We went to visit her in the rainy season of mud which just added to the despair.
There was someone stoned outside where she was living.
She told us of coming upon a toddler sitting alone in the dirt, chewing on a used condom.
What kind of terrible parent lets their child go live in such a place???
Well, apparently this one.
It’s a parenting choice that I’ve been tempted to regret, but one that God has used.
Today I was reading Acts 4:23-31. Peter and John have just been released from the religious officials who were totally ticked off because they had healed a lame beggar and preached some crazy stuff about the power of Jesus and Him being the only way. They come back to their friends and tell them everything that has happened.
And then they pray for a hedge of protection.
NOT.
They thank God and pray for BOLDNESS! Not the go-plan I naturally gravitate towards for our family!
Note to self: This does not say they prayed to have an EQ lobotomy or to be offensive for Jesus, but Peter and John have me thinking…
Does the kingdom advance without boldness? Without taking the love of Jesus into dark places, trusting that He will be our light and our shield?
Holy buckets! What does this mean for me, for you? Boldness may not mean taking the light of Jesus half-way around the world, but just across town or into relationships that require supernatural love, or perseverance, or hard truth.
It has me praying with open hands, saying,
“We are yours. Help us to be bold and brave and humble in carrying the light of your love into dark places. Do what only You can do in us and through us.”
Is it hard for you, like Peter and John, to pray for boldness for yourself or your children? How might God ask you to take His light into a dark place today?
