The guest post today is written by Deidra Riggs, whose blog Jumping Tandem is where I read this post that I want to share with you.
Deidra describes her blog as “a company, or a ministry, or a project, and this blog is where it all got started. I write about life as I see it. Most of the time, I’m just trying to figure it out. But always, I’m saving a place at the table for you.”
She is a mom, wife, dog owner, writer, speaker and event planner.
In the post I am sharing here today, which she calls “The Fullness of Our Faith“, Deidra speaks to my mother heart. I get her, where she is coming from, and I think that you will too.
“Where do you think he is, spiritually?” she asks me.
We are vacationing together, and we’ve decided on fried rice, egg rolls, and stir-fried deliciousness for dinner. We sit in the restaurant, our plates half empty, the sun inching its way toward the horizon. She is asking me about my son.
No one asks these questions about my daughter.
If I’m not careful, I fall into the very same trap. I look at my daughter, a youth pastor at a gigantic church on the east coast, and I don’t think twice about “where her heart is.” On the other hand, Christmas Eve may be the last time my son went to church.
You’d think you could figure out a thing like this, simply by looking at a person’s life.
In the restaurant, I give a long-winded answer. I tell the questioner about David Kinnaman’s research regarding people the age of my children — 18-29 year olds, raised in church, but more than half of whom have decided church is no longer the place for them. I’m telling her about nomads, prodigals, and exiles when my husband says, “But what’s your answer?”
My husband always sees right through me.
“He believes in Jesus,” I say. All I really needed to say was those four words. Why had I said so much?
We finish dinner and pay our bill. We climb into the SUV and we make a few more stops along the way to our resting place for the night. And all of it still niggles at me.
“It must be hard to be a parent,” my son said to me one day last summer.
My mind was spinning, trying to figure out, of all the difficult elements of parenting, which one was front and center in his mind.
“Why do you say that?” I asked him.
“Well,” he began, “I imagine you have this kid, and right from the beginning you have hopes and dreams for how that kid will live his life. But the kid grows up, and that kid has a mind of his own, and he ends up doing his own thing and living life his own way. And it’s not anything like what you imagined.”
I remember being speechless.
“That must be hard,” he’d said into the space between us.
I remember that conversation with my son as I sit in the SUV, with our vacation companion. I think about my daughter, and about all the ways we each are still growing up. How we never really reach the fullness of our faith this side of heaven, I don’t think.”
This year, the church my hubby grew up attending celebrates it’s 250th anniversary. The building, itself is well over one hundred years (and hubby says there may still be a few original members 😉 ). It was a place of great learning, of inspiration and of feeling loved and accepted by hubby from birth to adulthood.
One of my favorite churches, because of it’s setting, is the Saint Thomas de Memramcook Church (in New Brunswick). With it’s tall center spire, and perfectly balanced stained windows below. It sits atop a hill, overlooking flat lands that the Bay of Fundy flow into. It always takes my breath away when I look at where it sits … like a beacon, a lighthouse, for weary travelers.
Yesterday I wrote about the struggle to make coffee before having had that first cup of morning coffee, in my post 
Why do I believe in an invisible God? Why do I believe that I am a sinner in need of a Savior? Why do I have faith in a man who was executed, who rose from the dead, and then was carried back up into the heavens?
Hubby and I looked at each other, laughed, then shared my similar comment with the occupant of the rear of the vehicle. Then my son and I decided that if the two of us were to build a home, our first priority would be the view.
Lin. They are both amazing athletes, they are both young men (Jeremy is twenty-three, and Tebow is twenty-four), they are both sought after to market many products, they are both nice young men (going only by what the press has said … so far … about them), and they are both loudly professing Christians.
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itsawonderfilledlife 