I’ve been wanting to blog about this for some time…today seems like as good a time as ever…
When I was young and people started talking about babies (a conversation I usually steered clear from) I often said with great bravado, “I would be willing to go through a tremendous amount of labor to give birth to a 20 year old self-sustaining child”. It seemed like such a brilliant idea…a child without 20 years of training…my kind of parenthood, or so I thought.
You see, I thought that by age 20, these people would surely not need me for much (and so you see the absolute self-absorbed world I lived in for, oh so long). While that’s true, the real hard part about raising people is not their physical neediness, but in the aches and needs of their heart.
Well…I got what I wished for! Our ministry with DTS is really about giving birth to very sufficient 20 year olds. But, as I have come to find about most things I thought when I was young, I was wrong. Though these students are not my own flesh and blood, I have an inkling of what it’s like to keep watching them as they blossom into adulthood. I had lulled myself into thinking that it got easier, when in fact, it does not.
Right now there are some very significant twenty-somethings that are on the tip of my heart…I wake up and pray for them, I go to the store to cook something for them, I love having them around, I watch them wince in actual pain and wince with them in figurative pain. Some may get married in a few weeks, some will stay here in Thailand and some will go home…some are wondering what happened to their “home”.
It’s frightful…this discipleship that mirrors flesh and blood children is as overwhelmingly wonderful as it is sometimes painful. Watching a young person face up to their fear of man and choose not to step in because this moment is meant to change the trajectory of their life…hoping another one hears God’s voice and obeys…praying like crazy….maybe more I ever have….these are the birthpangs of 20 somethings.
I thought it would be easy, but instead…by God’s amazing grace…it is just another thing to tether me to the Gospel of Christ. And in it all, God gives us the greatest satisfaction as we live to serve Him. We are so unbelievably blessed…you guys have no idea.
We love you – Jen
Some of my favorite twenty-somethings...