A Warning to Complacent Women (and everyone!)

As the last two weeks have gone by since my son and I sat down and talked about our fears, there has been a tremendous peace upon us.  The things that are normally triggers for both of us we now recognize almost right away as just that, a potential trigger, but not necessarily what needs to send us over the edge in fear and anxiety.

For him, not hearing back from his teacher quickly would make him feel anxious, but now he knows his "Teacher" hears his cry and that "as soon as He hears it, He answers", so now he simply cries out to God and give him back his anxiety.  For me, it is simply choosing to also take my thoughts captive. For me, one of my triggers is when we host an event.  The whole week before can make me insecure as all I see are the things I dislike about our property and I always focus on those things that make me upset instead of being grateful for what I have.  This past week, every time an anxious thought came into my head, I recognized it for what it was and once again, chose gratitude.  What a better way to live!

We had all begun to be a little concerned about our dog and her pregnancy status.  We were supposedly more than half way through her pregnancy and though there were some signs, nothing obvious and we began to think we were making up her symptoms in our head.  We had to book an ultrasound to confirm whether or not she was and so we would have peace of mind, if you can imagine.  My son's thoughts kept going to the fact it was such a waste of money if she wasn't as he had paid a high stud fee.  He also fought the idea that if she wasn't, his source of paying his tuition would be gone.  But then he saw what he was doing and said again, "She's not my dog.  She's God's."

We got to the clinic and to our amazement, as the vet started using the machine a bunch of blobs started showing up on the screen.  My son wasn't sure what he was seeing so he asked, "Is she pregnant?"  "Oh, yes!"  Apparently there are so many puppies she couldn't count them all!  Such a miracle!  We drove out of there so excited!  It was almost the same feeling as finding out I was for the first time!  There's such a sense of awe and wonder and amazement at new life.  We truly found ourselves rejoicing over the potential birth ahead of us in just a month.  In fact, we are becoming more and more like Dr. Doolittle over here as our two cats are also due any day, so between the 3 animals, there are going to be a LOT of fuzzy, impossibly cute, little beasts running around here soon. We actually can't wait!  I've got a little nursery upstairs in my room for the silly cats and then we are turning our homeschool room into a nursery for the crazy puppies.  I can hardly believe I just wrote that.

But, why should we surprised?  At the end of those passages I wrote about last time, it says, "You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart as one set out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel."  That's describes the "new us" - full of songs in the night and gladness of heart.  The joy of the Lord really has been our strength.

The passage I wrote about in Isaiah 30 was amazing, but Isaiah 32 took it to a whole new level:

"Rise up, you women who are at ease, hear my voice; you complacent daughters, give ear to my speech.  In little more than a year you will shudder, you complacent women; for the grape harvest fails, the fruit harvest will not come.  Tremble, you women who are at ease, shudder, you complacent ones." (Isaiah 32:9-11)

This passage has so much in it.  First of all, it is addressed to daughters, to complacent women.  I have daughters, both in my own family and in the family I "foster".  I recognize a certain degree of complacency in both.  It is seen in literally too much sleep as well as in a lackadaisical (great word, had to look it up for spelling!) approach to life.  The word complacent is also a very interesting word. I also looked that up to see what the true definition was on-line.  It said it so perfectly.  Simply, "Satisfied.  Unaware of the dangers ahead."  Wow, did lights ever go on for me.  Are my daughters complacent?  At ease?  I sure don't want them to be, so just like with my son, I almost ran to get them.

They LOVE the musical Hamilton.  So much so that they have played it so often that my 5 year old knows most of the words to this amazing hit musical.  Alexander Hamilton was one of the founding fathers of American History and the whole musical is about his life and role that he played.  One of the songs has the line "Rise Up" in it.  I asked the kids, "What is that song about?  Why does he have to 'rise up'?"  One of my girls says, "Because he's about to birth a nation?"  YES!!!!  HE'S ABOUT TO BIRTH A NATION!  Rise up means that you are about to be a part of something HUGE!  But, sadly, we don't rise up.  We love our comfortable little life and we don't want to take risks or be out of our comfort zone.  We love being "at ease".  Hamilton knew he had to rise up, why don't we?

My poor kids.  I regularly give pep talks.  I really should have been a Dallas Cheerleader.  I'm quite good at them.  I went on..the danger of being complacent is that you can't see the danger!  Being complacent seems safe when it is actually very dangerous!  I thought it was interesting that the Bible includes a time line, "little more than year".  Life doesn't unravel right away when you start making bad decisions.  No, it isn't always suddenly, though it can be.  Sometimes it falls apart over time.  The character traits we long to see in our kids don't show up or do show up as they get older.  We don't always see perseverance or discipline until much older, but if we don't see it by then, it can be too late.  The Bible warns in this chapter that after that timeline, "you will shudder, you complacent women; for the grape harvest fails, the fruit harvest will not come."  This is such a great comparison for us as we actually grow grapes!  We've had a failed grape harvest, just last year.  Not good, a financial loss.  It felt like such a waste of effort that we had put in for the whole season, to only have it come in way below what we had hoped.  Same with parenting...if we put in a whole lot of effort into them in the beginning, which we feel we have, and then they decide, nah, this whole living a good life thing is just not for me, and stray off, it will feel to us that our "grape harvest" will have failed!  Not what we want.

Inside each one of our daughters, and all of our children, there are little seeds of fruit.  We long to see this fruit, in the form of character traits, "harvested".  But this verse says, "the harvest will not come". In order to see fruit in anyone's life, it has to have the exact right conditions - sun, soil, water, etc. Same with spiritual fruit, if there is a weed like "complacency" or being "at ease", there is no way fruit will be seen.  I warned them, we don't want the grape harvest to fail!  We want the fruit harvest to come!

I have had so many opportunities this week and last to share this verse, but not just with my own daughters, with my sons, too, and with other friends.  This warning certainly cannot only apply to daughters, what about to mothers (i.e. me!) and fathers?  We cannot afford to be complacent in any way, shape, or form, in our attack on debt, our attempts at raising Godly children, in anything!

So needless to say, I've been living in Isaiah all week, really loving the challenge and sharing it with anyone who will listen.  Poor those people.