A Chinese Mother and me

Andy told me a story the other day. A wrecking kind of story.

The story was about a Chinese mother. No longer a wife—her husband was gone. She was a Christian and for that, she was thrown in prison.

One day, the guards came to tell her that it was important as a single mother to be with her children. She was free!

I imagine the joy, the relief, maybe even some disbelief, as she walked to the final gate, where her two sons waited for her, calling to her.

Then the guards stopped her.

You must deny Christ to go through these gates. To go to your children.

I imagine her heart twisting and tears filling as her boys called out to her, desperate to have a mother back. Who knows what sort of life they had without their mother, and a black-listed Christian mother for that matter? I can hear Satan’s whispers:

What will happen to your children if you refuse to deny His Name?

They’re just words. These guards aren’t going to believe anything different whether you deny His Name or not.

You can do more good and share the gospel with more people if you’re released.

While I don’t have nearly the same choice in my life, I do have my own dreams and desires twisting me away. It’s hard to stare head-on with the future and choices. And they’re scary choices. Ones with fear. Ones with unknown. Ones with costs that must be counted high.

Sometimes it’s seemingly simple—do I upgrade my phone to an iPhone and take on the additional twenty-something-dollar monthly fee, or do I keep my “basic” phone and use the money for something else?

I feel the shame sting as I struggle to confess to Andy how difficult it is to turn down the iPhone.

And then there’s the issue of the Call. In my third year of teaching and Andy’s third year of seminary, we’re over the halfway point of our obligations. Of debt that holds us down. We were thinking we could maybe start a family in our 4^th year, the final year.

But the reality of not knowing where God is leading shatters my open-palm-held plans. Or I thought I held the plans with fingers uncurled. But what God has been showing me is that my knuckles have whitened around my plans for too long.

As what feels like every other young couple around our age announces the expectancy, then arrival of their first babies, the envy burns and I want to turn to my calendar and count the days to the Magical Fourth Year. 

But that’s my plan.

God has slowly peeled back a few of my fingers one at a time from my desperate dreams to show me the Possibilities. The What Ifs. Those high costing choices.

Like Malaysia, a country and a people that have settled into Andy’s heart and are slowly moving into mine as well. But it’s hard for Malaysia to move in my heart when it’s still clinging to my perfect four-year-plan, keeping three kitty cats, paying off debt.

The Chinese mother had her own high-cost choice.  She had no way of knowing how things would turn out if she chose the promise that Christ is Lord over the promise of the prison guards. We  want to believe that if she made the hard choice of Christ over freedom, that God would reward that with a quick release or some other miracle anyway. After all, how can you believe that God is good and Christ is Lord when it doesn’t have a happy ending?

As Andy told me, she looked at her boys and heard the guards’ promptings and Satan’s treacherous questioning, and yet proclaimed Christ is Lord.

So when she didn’t know the chain of events that would unfold after her choice, and when the “rational” and even comfortable choice would of course been her boys—how could a mother give that up?—she trusted that when it doesn’t make sense and she can’t see the end, Christ is still Lord over it. Christ is still the ruler. He is still sovereign. When everything seems like a disaster and like it could never be a happy ending, He still meant it for good. He designed that mess for good.

Her ending was not happy. It was messy. She chose Christ. Her oldest boy chose bitterness. Upon her release, some many years later, he was a staunch atheist and refused to speak to her. No reconciliation.

Christ is Lord.

Do I dare echo her words? My “costs” are still far from hers, but the pain it costs to let new God-given plans push out these idol-dreams of pretty babies in an actual house and not this apartment is every bit real. I’ve buried this inside for the shame of admitting that I like my ideas over God’s.

So as I watch the happy little families buzzing around and the envy starts to burn—again? Didn’t I just lay this one down?—I start to hear that redeemed voice in me growing with just enough grace to say,

Christ is Lord.

The envy is down to a smoking coal. 

If I yield my plans, my timeline, I will not be guaranteed that I’ll have beautiful children and a lovely home. A lot about Malaysia, its possible costs, its needs threaten that plan. For that matter, there are countless other ways that God might need me that don’t allow for that pretty idyllic picture of Andy, Kelsey, babies and kitties, a house for a home and no debt for school. Can I trust that Christ is still in control and that He is still good if I not only have to lay down the dreams for a time, but if I can never ever ever pick them back up?

With wobbly faith that He gives grace sufficient for each cost,

Christ is Lord.