Chief Executive Mom

Visit me at my new website - anniecrawford.com I have had so many ideas and plans for posts, yet so little heart to give them form. My sister is again on the streets, talking foolish nonsense about going undercover for the cops, or becoming a drug dealer or maybe a prostitute. A few days after being evicted for doing Meth, today she showed up again, became abusive and had to be forcibly removed from the safe/sober house we had helped her get into. As deeply as I grieve, I know my parents are truly suffering right now. I have written more about our family drama previously, if you are wondering about the whole story. Search the archives for melancholy titles. Tonight, sadness consumes me. I know that I am being changed, the hard, worthless stone of my heart is being transformed into blood-full flesh, able to bleed for the lost, wounded and hurting. For this I am truly and sincerely thankful. I can understand how pain produces truly beautiful fruit, yet I plead that it might not be purchased by the destruction of those I love.

I took to imagining worse scenario that would be more painful and grievous, in order to help the burden feel lighter. I also want to imagine how others in the world are hurting and how, if they might cross my path, how I might minister to them and encourage them. I have found that those who have not hurt deeply often have no idea how to be a comfort. In fact, I remember feeling very awkward at my grandfather's funeral for I had no idea what to do with my mother's deep pain and grief. That experience taught me humility at least, and now I am learning to be brave and reach out with tender touch, to soften and weep with those who weep and most importantly, how to labor through prayer.

I apologize for the weight of this post, but it is my blog and I needed the therapy tonight. My sweet husband asked if I needed to talk and I didn't. I needed to write. There is a definite difference, for in writing I can work through my thoughts alone, backspacing as necessary. You truly can't take something back in conversation. Sometimes my thoughts and heart are messy enough that they need a medium capable of editing!

How the sermon topics at church have coordinated with events in this family drama has been amazing, miraculous and providential. This week the main pastor spoke on keeping our eyes on heaven, on the goal; that all things shall be one day reconciled, that our hope is in heaven, and we must look at the path before us with the horizon of paradise in view. We must live through our circumstances always with the marriage supper of the lamb in mind, always straining to hear the day when our Lord embraces us and whispers, "Well done, faithful servant." I leave out good, because I am acutely aware of my own un-goodness. It is only under the pressure of this hurt that I really reach out in love. Perhaps by the time I get there, He will have purified this dross and truly conformed me to His image, having made me "good".

I asked my pastor how I was to hope in the promises of heaven in a circumstance where the greatest reason I hurt is a fear that one I love won't be there. How do I hope in the reconciliation of heaven when not all will be there to be reconciled. The pastor reminded me of the verse that had already been haunting my thoughts, "unless you hate mother and father, sister and brother, you cannot be my disciple". How we see through a mirror darkly! How I know that the sufferings of the present are not worthy to be compared to the glory to be revealed! How I know that all our wickedness rightly falls upon our own head! I marvel not that my sister is lost. I marvel that I am found. Why me and not her? There seem to be some things that cannot be completely, perfectly understood. But I have lived through such experiences of incomprehension turned into understanding and peace. I had no ideal the love of being a parent. I could not fathom having my heart so open to another creature, and yet now it is and I am thankful and I could not imagine it or wish it to be any other way.

This is the walk of faith; some things cannot be known until the story is over. I asked myself if my grief could cause me to 'lose faith'. Most honestly, I cannot imagine so. What else do I believe? I have already in my short life searched high and low and found none like the Lord. No other philosophy or faith offers any better answers to the questions my pain yields. Further, every step of faith I have taken has brought me greater freedom and peace. The degree to which I have trusted this Jesus is the degree to which I have found healing. I was lost and am found. Where else can I go, I have as Peter found the words of eternal life. Perhaps I will too deny the Lord thrice before the dawn breaks, but I know that he holds me and will not let me go. I only wish I knew that He held my sister.

I have decided that Armenianism thrives because it is easier and more 'human'. If I think that salvation depends ultimately upon human will, then I have hope that I can control that human will, that I can work hard enough to persuade it. Is this not the hope of most evangelism classes and strategies? Or, if my efforts to persuade the will don't work, then I can righteously judge that will, "Well, she choose this path for herself." However, if I affirm election and the salvific hand of grace, then I must, as "Jacob-have-I-loved" did, wrestle with God himself.