Life has kind of leveled out for us. It doesn’t feel as much like every day is such a struggle. 2017 was a breeze in comparison to the previous 4 years. The receptionist at the registration at the hospital still knows our name but she doesn’t have David’s birthdate memorized anymore. That’s because he didn’t have one single ER visit or hospitalization. His therapy visits have moved to a ranch up an hour drive from us that uses horses to help him achieve speech and occupational therapy goals. David had only one UTI and significantly less headaches. He’s been able to tolerate me loosening up on his diet restrictions without a lot of problems. Our oldest has been blossoming into a much less anxiety-filled, tantrum-throwing child. She is really becoming a sweet, responsible little person. Our youngest is starting to show signs of the terrible twos but definitely more manageable so far. She is going to have to get used to not being the youngest because we are expecting baby #3 in July!
Because this last year has been a lot less stressful, I’ve been able to think about reaching out a little more. I’ve been thinking a lot about “loving your neighbor” and what that means. Our mission field is not Africa, it’s not in South America, it’s right in our homes, in our backyards, across the street. In Helen Roseveare’s book, “Give Me This Mountain,” she gives a succinct description of what a missionary is: “I believe that, at its simplest, a missionary is sent by God to live a Christian life, usually amongst people other than his own. It is living which counts.” It is living which counts.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, sometimes I can’t tell which, we have people in our home 10 hours a day. We don’t get much privacy so our “living” cannot be hidden by going home, away from probing eyes. What you see is what you get. Our marriage, our faith, our mistakes, our arguments, our love, our messes, our imperfections, our family is on display pretty much all. the. time.
Colossians 3:17 NLT And whatever you do or say, do it as a representation of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
About a week ago, God gave me an opportunity to act in His representation. I hope I did what He would have had me to do but I can tell you, I was fully prepared to act the opposite way. We have a caregiver that is not very punctual or reliable. She’ll find every excuse under the sun to be up to 45 minutes late. It was getting on my nerves how late she was all the time, among other things. Last Sunday she followed us to church in her own car so had the freedom to not participate in our service. When we were done, she agreed to meet us at our home. We needed gas so we were going to be a few minutes behind her. We got home and she was not there. I got everyone out of the van, in the house, prepared and ate lunch, and she was STILL not there. Where was our caregiver?? I called the agency she works for. They acted like they had no idea what happened to her. They called back, saying she had checked on her kids and found the babysitter had ditched the kids so she needed to stay with them. But no one had bothered to communicate this to us. So, next shift she was scheduled, I was fully prepared to confront her on leaving a client without any communication in the middle of a shift. If anyone knows me, I don’t do confrontation. I avoid it if at all possible but I felt this was a pretty important issue of neglect that I couldn’t ignore. She started crying and told me she had communicated with the company and THEY didn’t bother to communicate with us. She also had been assaulted when she had confronted her negligent babysitter. I ended up forgiving her and buddy taping and bandaging her broken finger. Sometimes, it takes a lot of patience and supernatural love of the Lord flowing through you to respond to these situations. There are so many broken people that are struggling to just manage to get through life that need God’s Love.
