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.”
So, when our kids were preschoolers, I would ask them BEFORE we went to purchase a Slurpie what flavor they hoped to get, and why. Doing this alleviated the frustratingly long time it would take them to make a decision, while there were dozens of people waiting in line behind us. Sure they sometimes changed their mind, but, overall, thinking ahead helped their anticipation of what they 
chose to grow. As they got older we would talk about drug and alcohol use in teens, and they would talk about the possibility of using those substances, and how that might hinder their future goals (another discussion that happens W A Y before grade 12 … more like since they could talk). So, as their peers started experimenting they have known, before peer pressure was involved, what they would choose, and why (this is not a guarantee, but if they have a goal they have chosen, and a reason for choosing it, they then have the intrinsic motivation to make choices, not in the moment, but that help them achieve their goals).
Filial cannibalism is the act of eating ones own offspring. Creatures from birds to fish to spiders (they should eat more of their young) all practice this horrendous act.
But then we are, ever so quickly, reminded of what our heart really feels about these offspring of ours. We would do anything for them, we would even die to save their lives.
awe, and commitment that a parent feels when their newborn is placed in their arms. Second is how that beautiful, innocent, miraculous bundle of joy turns into a surly, snarly, stubborn teenager.
mean to those younger than her, she has hissy fits, she leaves the house without telling anyone where she is going, and she might spend days without saying a single word to her father. Then, one day every week she goes out in public to say how much she loves her Daddy. And you know what, because her father is God, He welcomes me back … every time. Because my Father God knows I am going to be surly (it’s a given, just like our kids), but He sees in my the enormity of what I can become, and He isn’t going to give up on my until I see it too.
itsawonderfilledlife 