"Among the Fireflies".......A Defining Moment.
This should have been my first post. Sometimes it takes me a while to write the words the way I want them. I sat in the tractor again to day and disked the last field before we put things way for the winter. It is there that I do a lot of thinking, planning and praying. I have not shared this story with very many people.....I wasn't ready. I just wanted it to be my moment for a while.
As some of you know, we have had some tough family stuff in the past. Things that make you fall apart.....things you can not fix as a parent. Our oldest son left for college and turned his life upside down, inside out and backwards. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done..........to watch and not be able to control any of it. The horror of not always knowing where he was or if he was safe or even if he was alive. I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat panic and pray. I could feel he needed it right at the moment. He made some bad choices. As parents you pull back from the outside world. Why? because you are doing everything you can to just survive....you are trying to hold the rest of your family together as it affects them all. You are trying to hold your marriage together because tough love is hard and you may disagree or you just handle things in a different way.
I call this child "my Jonah". Many times God would spit him out on the dry sand......and many times he would head the opposite direction of God's leading. But I always told him that God had a special plan for him and that HE was going to use him in special way. Time would pass, he had it all figured out, he knew all the answers. At this point a mom told me that he was God's child and God would not let him go. These were wise words, comforting words............but I am a "doer". God expected more from me right? I was the mom, there had to be something. I should pray more, I should find someone he could talk to, I could read books on how to parent, I could find other resources for him. I would punish myself over and over thinking what did we do wrong? What should we have done different? Well I continued to pray, I begged God to show us what we were supposed to do next, how could we reach him. I did my best to hold myself and the rest of the family together. I gave him over to God only to take him back when it seemed that God was doing nothing.
This is the part of the story I want you to think about. Someone made the comment to me...."well maybe God is telling you what to do...maybe you just are not listening." You know how the little hairs stand up in the back of your neck.......? Yes that was me. I thought you have got to be kidding me. She of course had the perfect family and had no idea what I had been living with the past years. I was waiting for God to use me, for Him to show me. I had begged for answers.
Later that week I took my prayer journal and walked to the railroad tracks about 1/4 mile from our house. It was a beautiful night. It was quiet. A low rumbling thunderstorm was far away in the south sky. As the sun set and the sky darkened, the fields began to light up. Millions of fireflies came out. There was blanket of soft little lights everywhere. I sat among the fireflies. My heart was tired. I stubbornly came there to wait for God to talk to me. I sat on my favorite thinking place and told God I was going to stay there until He told me how to reach my son. I told Him I was listening...........As I sat among the fireflies my heart softened some, but God did not talk to me. I waited ....and waited. The millions of fireflies continued to glow in the the absolute quiet night and I waited. In a special moment I finally realized what God wanted from me. God was right there, His message for me came in the complete silence "be still and know that I am God". We sometimes look so hard for answers when we just need to be still and trust Him. I finally found peace. God didn't need me to change my son's heart, He needed me to trust Him. God brought me to a quiet, still place among the fireflies to teach me that He loves my son more than I do. He just wants me to Trust Him.
