Last year, beginning in March 2008, our family went through some tough, emotional and ugly times. We even capped off a year we’d like to forget with the death of our three year old Yellow Labrador Retriever, Moses. Yeah, it was a lousy year that we’d all like to forget.
As a result, my wife and I vowed that 2009 was going to be better. In retrospect, I’m not sure how, exactly, we were going to make that happen short of fasting and prayer. But you know what? God is sovereign, in control, and knows what He’s doing when He sends things our way or allows things to happen.
My prior post about teenagers and Ephesians 6 was meant to be light-hearted. But I’m sure some of you realize that, in spite of me trying to find some humor in it, something drove the post in the first place. Out of respect for my family’s privacy, I don’t want to share details other than we’re struggling with a teenager who just doesn’t seem to care that, at the rate he’s going, he’s not going to make it through 10th grade or even graduate from high school.
The thing is, my stepson–the aforementioned teenager–is a bright, young man with a good and generous heart. I think I’m being objective here, since he’s my stepson. If he were my flesh and blood, you could discount this by saying “Well yeah, everyone’s kid is an angel.” In my situation as a stepfather, my stepson’s dad is very much in his life (which is a great thing). We all have had our ups and downs over the past 8 years or so, and the ironic thing is, the relationship between my wife and I and my stepson’s dad is better than ever while we are all living through this torment of raising a teenage boy. But let me also say that things could be very much worse than they are. The worst of this issue is that up until this point, my stepson has seemingly just been going through the motions of attending his sophomore year at high school as opposed to being there to really learn anything. Again, he’s not stupid. Quite the contrary. He’s very intelligent and very creative. We are all struggling to figure out what is going to motivate him and to wake up and smell the fast-approaching senior year.
Tonight, we all seem to be going in separate directions. I feel such a feeling of despair running through my house and I know that it’s spiritual warfare. The messages running through my brain are all from the enemy. I was certain that tonight was going to be the first time I missed a post. But then I thought, that’s just what the devil wants me to do: just give up this whole blog. I can hear him lying in my ear: “Who do you think you are sharing your faith? You have no faith! You’re a lousy Christian! All your readers will soon find you out. God’s not pleased with what you are doing here. Just look at your stepson. You’re a fake!”
In this midst of this despair, I thought of Paul’s words to the church in Corinth. I’d like to share this with you as much as I need to hear it tonight myself:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you in firmly grounded, known that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. –2 Corinthians 1:3-10.
May He Increase!
Megan (1)
