From Helicopter Parent to Helicopter Wife

May 2, 2024

Maria Answers to Prayer, Holy Spirit, Marriage, Parenting, Prayer, Proverbs 3 , , , , , , Leave a comment

From Helicopter Parent to Helicopter Wife

Yes, I admit, I was one of those moms.  Even before the term grew into a household word, I would try to remove difficulties from my boys’ lives. If I’m honest, I was more motivated to make their lives easier for my sake. I don’t like people around me to be unhappy. 

That’s pretty naïve, given that in this life, we are guaranteed afflictions. Unfortunately, I grew up with a father who modeled trying to keep everyone happy. Peace at any cost.

For most of our sons’ growing up years, I was not yet a biblical Christian. Nor had I even heard of the caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly analogy. We’ve all probably heard the story of how someone with good intentions trying to ease the struggle of the emerging butterfly actually doomed this beautiful creature to an early death by helping her to emerge from her cocoon.

One time when our oldest son was in 8th grade, he felt his English teacher wasn’t treating him fairly. We called for a meeting with the teacher so Graham could air his grievances. In hindsight we should have encouraged him first to seek a solution himself with the man.

To my shame, I even had my husband write one of Graham’s college professors his freshman year when he earned a C that first fall semester.

This same tendency to want to ‘magic away’ our sons’ problems wasn’t confined to just them. Rather, I have brought that pattern into my marriage.

For years, just because I desired a ‘happy husband’, I’ve tried to fix things for my husband without him asking for my assistance. This is called ‘mothering’ as I recently read.  Mothering one’s children is appropriate (though not in those ways I tried to shield Graham and Wes from good growth opportunities).  However, treating an adult man (and especially my husband) that way is demeaning and dishonoring.

I’m learning now how I’ve made an idol of a ‘pleasant life’.  I’ve been slow to realize that people’s feelings are their responsibility and that upsets and problems can’t be avoided. On the contrary, difficulties provide opportunities for us to grow. Healthy families support one another during trials, offering empathetic love.

In addition, Christian parents and spouses have been given the gift of calling upon Jesus on behalf of the families.  I’m beginning to learn how when we have to struggle with the Lord’s help through a situation, we learn something more about God.  So, why would I want to stand in the way of that kind of blessing for family or friends?

Back to our kids, I do see that despite trying inappropriately to spare Graham from the reality of a mediocre college grade, God guided us to allow him to work alone through a crisis with the Lord.  After that first semester of college, Graham felt dissatisfied with James Madison University and the traditional college track. We allowed him to apply over Christmas to Berklee College of Music. The problem arose when he got accepted and he had to make the decision what to do, whether to stay at JMU after this first year or move to Boston.

As he had been growing as a Christian, we let him struggle with God and pray through the decision.  Wrestle he did, going back and forth in whether he should stay or go for about a month.  One morning, all of a sudden, as he explains it, he awoke feeling he should stay at JMU and not leave. He let that decision sit and as it persisted into the next day and beyond days, he realized that the Lord had indeed led him to an answer. And all through prayer.

Looking back, I see the benefit of treating him as an adult and allowing him to work it out with God. Seeing the Lord actually guide him in a decision about real life, a crisis, changed his faith from theoretical to real.

I know he would say that this was the right decision because once he decided to stay, he threw himself into college life. He formed a band with two friends and met Shay, his wife of 17 ½ years.

Recently, Jesus has been pointing me to how I have perhaps NOT been as good a wife to my husband as I should. For my own sake, I have attempted to create, reframe or control events just to avoid having to deal with the normal frustrations Mike has felt at various times.

It’s not like I don’t have a good example of a mature spouse who trusts the Lord and treats others as he would like to be treated.  He doesn’t try to solve ‘my problems’. He only weighs in when I ask for his advice. 

I welcome the opportunity to make some changes, especially when directed by the Holy Spirit!

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. Proverbs 3:5-7 NIV

Are you always working? What does that say about your God?

September 6, 2020

Maria Babylonian Exile, Ezekiel 20, Proverbs 3, Sabbath, Trusting God, Work , , , Leave a comment

Ezekiel 20:12 And I gave them my Sabbath days of rest as a sign between them and me. It was to remind them that I am the LORD, who had set them apart to be holy.

Last week, as August turned into September, we read God’s words to the Hebrew captives in Babylonia. For the first time, I saw the irony: teaching about Sabbath rest right before the Labor Day weekend.

Here’s a question for you: How would you describe Americans? What 3 adjectives would you use?

If you mention – workaholics, then we’re on the same wave-length. Americans BRAG about working long hours. It’s a virtue to be trumpeted, a boy scout merit badge to be admired by others. In culture at large and IN the church! How did this backward way of viewing life and organizing our seasons come about?

It certainly wasn’t the goal of government, which over decades enacted saner labor laws. NOR did technological innovators foresee work slavery as an unintended consequence. The 40-hour work week and inventions for both home and shop were meant to give us leisure. This slower pace would provide more time to connect and enjoy family, friends and neighbors. Evenings and weekends were margin we needed to rest and re-create. A time to STOP, look upward to God and outward to people. Yet culture did little to change our views of work and rest.Yet culture did little to change our views of work and rest. With the ‘freed up time’ we just did more stuff, more busy-ness.

What about Christians, those in the church? We’re no different than pagan culture. American seminaries even in the early part of the 20th century began straying from taking God’s Word as true, good and authoritative. Evangelical Christians today look, by and large, indistinguishable from their unbelieving colleagues.

Results? Pure insanity. ‘I’m so busy‘ has become a badge of honor.

Let’s look at the time of our agricultural and biblical ancestors, the Hebrews. When God gave His Law to Moses and the redeemed former ‘slaves’, everyone worked 7 days a week. Being commanded to keep the Sabbath would have been a crazy idea. Especially during the different harvest seasons. Unfavorable weather and natural enemies such as blight or pests were feared.

Trusting God enough to ‘remember the Sabbath and keep it holy’ proved impossible to obey. Generations as well as current cultural norms taught that your crops and your livestock were your financial security.

Like us today, it was easier to live by sight than by faith in the unseen God.

God’s 4th commandment and call to rest (He knows what our bodies need!) one day out of seven along with the holy days set aside to worship God cost the Hebrews a lot. Obeying them meant living by faith in the God who had covenanted with them and who promised to provide. They had to walk by faith and NOT by sight. They had to rely on God and NOT on what they and others had done for hundreds of years (i.e. use common sense) as Proverbs 3:5 commands:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

In our assigned reading this week, we read the LORD’s explanation to His people through the prophet Ezekiel. God patiently pointed out two purposes for His good gift of the Sabbath:

  • to remind them that the One they were called to trust at all times, especially on those Sabbaths that fell on sunny, dry days right in the middle of a harvest was the One who created the universe. He had covenanted to take care of them. In other words, He was ABLE and GOOD.
  • to remind them that they had been INTENTIONALLY separated and made different from their pagan neighbors…..they belonged to the LORD for HIS purposes, which were larger than their immediate need to get the harvest in before the weather changed.

So, back to the stereotypical workaholic American. What new thought did the Holy Spirit give me when I arrived at Ezekiel 20:12? Just this:

When we continue to work longer than we HAVE to, to get our work done, then we are acting like pagans, like those who have NO living God to depend on .

The workaholic Christian, whether a mom at home with kids or dad at work in an office or two breadwinners managing both work and kids – they broadcast to their watching neighbors/co-workers that ALL depends on THEIR efforts.

I know. Because I used to be that kind of teacher, one who believed IT was all up to me. Over the years, as the Lord pried my fingers off of ‘my free time’ on weekends to do lesson plans, He surprised me by showing me ways to be more effective with the time DURING the school week. Sundays DID evolve into days with more rest.

And by grace He has continued to deepen my trust in Him, to accomplish each day only what is ordained. I’m able to stop work and leave the undone things to His holy keeping for the morrow.

As I have pondered this reminder about the seriousness of Sabbath keeping, I’ve been asking myself: What does Sabbath look like for New Testament Christians? Here are my thoughts:

  • Are we called to live the entire Sabbath day (24 hours) differently from the other 6 days?
  • Alternatively, is it possible to have Sabbath rest 1/7th of each day, during the waking hours? What would that look like? Given that I fence off 8 hours a night for sleep, what is 1/7 of the remaining 16 hours? (2.3 hours a day.) So, what would qualify as Sabbath rest for those 2.3 hours or 2 hours and 17 minutes? (thus, is birthed a legalist Sabbath worshipper……)
  • OR…..is Sabbath rest for Christians more a posture, a heart leaning? Recall Paul’s guidance in 2 Cor 9:6-7 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Let’s look back at the text in Ezekiel. God gave the people the Sabbath to REMIND them of two facts: Who He is and Who THEY are.

Thinking through work and rest and discussing it with Mike yesterday on our Saturday hike, (thank you, Sweetheart, for pointing out the danger of falling into legalism!), leads me to place this question in the category of issues best left up to the individual conscience, as informed by God’s Word.

But working more than is necessary for an honest day’s labor does not build our case for the Good News of a kind Father who provides what we need, including rest.

As you enjoy your Monday holy-day, leave a few minutes to sit outside, soaking in beauty and maybe meditate on tangible ways you could implement to show the world something True, Beautiful and Good about our God.