Graciela is learning to read. Actually, she has been learning for 16 months. The 100 Easy Lessons that had my other kids reading in 6-8 months have not proved as effective with my baby girl. Remembering the difference between short "a" and long "a" has been agonizing. After a year of "two-steps-forward-one-step-back" progress, in January Gracie was still sounding out words like "the" and "and". I am not a reading specialist and years of homeschooling have not equipped me for Graciela's learning challenges. All I 've known to do is to be faithful and patient. Take the step backwards; reteach the concept again; express the belief that "you can do this, you are so smart!" All the while I'm woefully aware of my inadequacies, wondering if we are really making progress.
But a week ago, Graciela made that significant step of reading a real book: Dick and Jane, that old time favorite that was my first reader! A little chapter in that book launched Graciela forward. All the frustration is receding as she is seeing that she can read! Little words joining together into sentences that become a story. The process has been excruciating, but she is bathing in the triumph of being able to read.
This little girl victory has been God's reminder to me that growth is always a process: one that can seem interminable and excruciating. In the middle of any process it is easy to forget that the struggle will give way to triumph, that all those baby steps are really leading somewhere significant. This is not a new lesson, and yet, it is a lesson that I don't readily accept. Can't life's obstacles be overcome by smart strategies, hard work and good communication? If life gets too big, go to a friend or a minister or a counselor. Get advice and make good choices and those problems will be conquered.
But now I am a parent of teenagers and God is revisiting this lesson with me. He is exposing my "parental work ethic" as wholly inadequate. In bold print He is writing these words on my heart: GROWTH CANNOT BE HURRIED. Yes, I am a player in my kids' lives, but I am not the shaper of their hearts or the director of their decisions. I cannot orchestrate their lives so that they avert angst or jump over pain. What I am in this season is a faith partner, whose primary job is to hold out truth and trust and invite my kids partake. Of greater impact than my words to them is my prayers. The Holy Spirit who resides in my heart is the great engine of all growth. He alone can access their heart and stir a soul appetite for God. My role in this process is to BELIEVE. I am to camp on soul-nourishing truths like, "He who began a good work in you (my kids) will be faithful to complete it;" (Philippians 1:6) and "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2: 10) The faith that I long to see residing in my kids' hearts is what I need to nourish in my own heart.
Too often, however, I yield to momentary panic and frustration. I try to fix, persuade, demand, convict. I push for conversations that I hope will bring change. I live as if I can push my kids through this growth process and then we can all live happily every after. I tell my kids that God can be trusted with the details of their lives and then live as if He can't be trusted. I push for premature resolution, not leaving room for God to do the deep, soul work of redemption.
Faith is a mystery and so is growth. God's timetable is not my own. But His heart beats for my kids. He wants them to know His love and purpose even more than Mark and I do. These are the deep waters of faith: relinquishing my kids, believing that God is able to redeem every detail of their lives and use it all to bring them to a place of spiritual wholeness and renewal. To this I yield. . . the process of growth in the hands of a Savior who can be trusted.
