Wherever He Is

I just sent my girl back to boarding school. We had a fun girl's weekend in Singapore...lots of laughing and talking and shopping. It was an unexpected surprise. I had a medical visit scheduled on a three day weekend for her. So we scrambled and met in Singapore. It was a memory0-maker for sure. We had so much fun together that the goodbye was difficult once again. Read: it's always painful.I don't want to harp on the pain. I really don't. I want to get beyond it, but every.single.time the pain returns. The night before she leaves I get a pain in my chest that threatens to suffocate. And every time I pray, "Lord, help me love your will." I pray that because, as a family, we know that boarding school is God's will for our family at this time. It's not God's will for every family and it may not be God's will for our family in the future...but for now...for this time...it is God's will.As God's child, as His follower, I long to please Him. I long to walk with Him in a loving trusting, beautiful relationship. I don't want to look back or to the sides. I want to keep my eyes on Him, following, trusting. So what then, what do I do when I don't love what I know, feel, and sense is God's will? As a mom, wife, sister, and daughter who has left my passport country and home to follow Jesus, I thought that I had the following verses in the bag. I had a nice check mark in my "good works" notebook for this verse:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  Mathew 10:37-39

But you know what? It turns out that even on the other side of the world, Jesus calls me to lose everything for Him and to follow Him...even my "right" to be in the same city, country, and time zone as my teenager. Maybe for you it's not about sending your child to boarding school. Maybe it's about homeschooling or where you live. What do you do when you don't love God's will? What do you do when everything inside of you wants to take back the control of your life?As for me, I hold onto the verse above. I cry out to the one who loves me and calls me to give up my rights to follow Him. I release. I cry. I tell Jesus that I love Him even more than I love my daughter. What? Is that right? Yes, I tell Him that even if I'm not exactly feeling like it at the moment. I tell Him that to help me remember that my life is in Him, not my daughter. My home is in Him, not in my family. My way is in Him, not in what I think is right. The truth is in Him, not in me. And when I pray that, I find that He is bigger than me and stronger than me and able to work a miracle in me. The miracle is that wherever He is, is home. Wherever He is, is better. Wherever He is, is His will. And I want to be where He is even if it's at home without my daughter. I want to be wherever He is. Photo Credit