All Together Lovely

We welcomed home our son from his second seven-month deployment this week. I will not even try to describe the emotions with words for words are not needed – our first hug, captured by a photographer, says it all.

At the first sighting of his ship the tears began pouring out. Then there was a somewhat long pause in the tears as we waited for his ship to actually dock and for them to debark.  It’s a slow process, friends.

Once we spotted him walking toward us, the tears poured out again.

They were tears of relief.
They were tears of pure happiness.
They were tears of praise.

Another deployment is behind us – four deployments are now behind us. Praise God neither my husband nor our son has another deployment looming before them.

For the first time since June 2016, our family would spend two full days together.

Of course, throughout our son’s deployment we prayed for his (their) safe return. As the months became weeks and the weeks became days, I found myself praying more earnestly for God to fill me with courage to speak His truth to our boys once we were finally together.

Truthfully, I prayed not only for that but for a “perfect” two days together.

I prayed for us to be a light – to point our boys and the women in their lives to Him. I prayed for our words to be praiseworthy and uplifting. I prayed for our conversations to be filled with love and joy.
I prayed for our conversations to reflect patience, kindness, and gentleness. I prayed for those conversations to be open and to simply overflow with goodness. I prayed for everything to be perfect!

I am sure it will not surprise you to hear our time together fell short of perfection. Go figure, right?

That is not to say we were not a light, or our words were not praiseworthy and uplifting. And certainly there were many moments where the fruits of the Spirit were displayed. At least I hope so.

But when I climbed into bed those two nights, I wrestled with questions like: What could I have done better? What could I have said differently? What should I have said that I didn’t say? What should I have done that I didn’t do? In what way(s) did I contribute to our time together being less than perfect?

After almost twenty-seven years of parenting our boys, I am still a work in progress on parenting and loving them well. I know we will never arrive at a state of perfection this side of heaven. Regardless of this knowledge, there’s a continual plea to God to help me parent and love them better.

Please, don’t let me (or us) be the one(s) to cause them to stumble.

Oh how I pray for God to help me to love them so well they would see and experience His love.

I know I can often be too hard on myself. I am frequently guilty of believing the “you messed up again” lies from the enemy. I know our children are aware of how much they are loved by us, whether or not we parent and love well all the time. But the deepest desire of my heart is for them to know how much they are loved by God.

Therefore, I will never stop praying for the things I pray. I think I shall stop praying for perfection though.

Instead, I will trust our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Wholeness, everlasting, ever-present and never-failing God (Isaiah 9:6-7) to carry out His work in me to completion.

And I will praise Him for the grace upon grace He pours out on me every single day when I don’t do this parenting and loving thing well because there surely are plenty of days when I do not.

Most of all, I will keep looking to Jesus and I will love Him most so I will love our children best.

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By the way, the two days our family spent together were in so many ways all together lovely.

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