Friday, February 7, 2014

You've Got One Shot

A couple years ago I was talking to a mom and she commented, "I mean we've got one shot with our kids."  This mom had more kids than me at the time and has been a mom a little bit longer so my ears perked up and I focused on what she was saying.  She continued, "I mean we've got one shot at them doing little league and ballet and having the kind of childhood we want them to have."  My heart sank and I tried to force my face into something amiable.  My man usually gives me a look if my face is expressing something rude.  She continued with something about our kids only being kids for so long but I tuned out and my brain went into overdrive.  What does that mean for what I'm doing??  She knew we were planning on moving overseas.  I'm moving their childhood far away and taking away all the "American Dream Childhood" of baseball and 4th of July away from them.  We of course considered our kids a ton in our decision to move overseas.  Our location choice was covered in prayer about going to a place where our whole family would thrive.

Now we're here, on the other side of the world, raising our crew.  The things we knew we would miss are a reality.  Figuring out school and friends and fun are all new and very very different than how my kids would be doing things in the states.  But none of the things that really matter in seeing our hopes and dreams for our kids are missing.  In fact, we are seeing that it's quite the opposite.

What we hope and dream and pray over our children is that they grow to love and follow Jesus.  We want them to be disciples that make disciples who make disciples.  We want Proverbs 22:6 to be true for them, that when they are old they will not depart from the way they should go.  We want them to make Jesus' command in Matthew 28 to go to the nations and make disciples their lifeline.

While we love baseball (one of my man's life goals is to visit every major league baseball stadium in the states), ballet (all dancing really, we frequently have a dance party to "Move it, Move it" after dinner), apple pie, and all those American pastimes, we don't need them to succeed at our "one shot".  Our kids are learning first hand that not everyone knows that "Jesus loves me".  At their precious young ages they are learning not only how to pray for the nations but how to live among other peoples and tell them that Jesus does loves them and came to rescue them.

There have been and will be some long hard days that come with living cross culturally, but we anxiously look forward to seeing the reward of seeing our little disciples being apart of their friends hearing the name of Jesus for the first time.  In fact, in this city our kiddos telling them might be their friend's one shot at hearing the truth of the gospel.  

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