secret life. (Deut. 29.29)

The secret things belong to the Lord our God,

but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever,

that we may follow all the words of this law.

                                                                        Deut. 29.29

When I grow up…

How many times do we say those words, encourage those words, listen with expectancy to what follows those words?  For me, it followed… I want to be a child psychologist… a lawyer… a professor… at the various seasons of my formative life.

In many ways, I am a child psychologist, a lawyer, and a professor on a daily basis.  I am a mom.  I answer questions most grown-ups have ceased to ponder… I settle disputes between citizens… I psycho-analyze, treat, and counsel.  But for the most part, it is a secret life. 

Ironic, because when Dan preached Sunday about our own temptations being tailor-made for us based on our background, history, and personality, my lure is ambition.  In my growing up years, love said, “You’re the best.”  Success said, “You’re the best.”  Happiness said, “You’re the best.”  I was out in front.  Team captain.  First chair.  Scholar.  Smiling.

I attribute my calling to be a stay-at-home mom to my senior year of high school, a period of my life when God stepped in and did some extreme makeover renovations.  I was a girl who owned a bright and clean unopened Bible; He opened it and told me to decline the scholarship and go to a different college than I had ever planned or desired to go to.  I was a self-proclaimed feminist who scorned notions of a woman’s proper place; okay, so I still am, but He really threw me for a loop when I started desiring -really desiring - to be a mom. I was dumbfounded to find my gaze shifting from corporate women to stay-at-home moms.   When I completed an assignment of creating a collage of “my future” from magazine clippings, I remember plain as day standing in my bedroom quite baffled that the largest, centrally located picture was of a cute young mom in a ponytail and all things Nike, pushing a double stroller of toddlers.  It was sort of like, “Huh?  How did that get there?” 

Lots of years, tears, diapers, and debt later, I own very little Nike, and my workout program consists of three circuits: cleaning my own house, mowing my own yard, and getting my own groceries.  But our sweet Callie Amelia will journey to kindergarten this Fall.  And in many ways I feel like it’s my senior year of high school again.  What do I want to be when I grow up?

I always assumed that when the girls headed off to school I’d head off to a real job.  I’ve been thinking about this transition for years, just as I thought for years about it the first go around.  So why am I so surprised to hear the Lord, like Ty Pennington yelling out through his megaphone, “GOOD MORNING, REEVES FAMILY!!!” 

This is a year of renovations.  Truth be told, this is a year of mass demolition and of building something brand new and beautiful from the ground up in an insane period of time.  I feel like we’re on day six of the Journey Campus and we need to move in the furniture but we can’t because the sheetrock’s not all up and the paint isn’t dry, and the family is already on their way back from vacation.  That’s when the designers join the town doctors and teachers and bank tellers to form a vast army that empties those trucks and gets that house in order just in time to greet the people – crying, jumping, yelping for joy – and present to them their new home.

I’m not called or paid to move furniture.  But its going to take every one of us working with all our might doing things we’ve never done before to get the home ready in time so that it can be a place that leads people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. 

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might…” (Eccl. 9.10)

If that means, for me, putting in long hours and late nights doing behind-the-scenes work that will never have my signature at the end, I want to remember that the secret things – both today’s anonymity and tomorrow’s unknown – belong to the Lord our God.   Staying up late nursing a colicky infant or staying up late typing forms and lists and emails – both are beautiful offerings of worship to Him who sees what is done in secret and has promised to reward.  (Mt. 6.6)

Do you have a secret life?  It doesn’t have to be your job or your area of service – most of those are quite public.  But He has called each of us to a secret life in Him.  Oswald Chambers said, “Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him.”  Jesus said, “When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets… When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret… When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father… When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to people that you are fasting, but only to your Father… and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  (Mt. 6)

I first read the following words in college, when I first heard the second portion of my calling – ministry.  I love it that He called me to be a mom first.  It always reminds me of the priority relationship and still serves to order my daily life.  But my dear sweet mentor Oswald Chambers – [can’t wait to meet him in heaven – how many young ministers has he mentored?] – reminds me today that I don’t worship the calling.  I don’t worship the work.  I don’t worship motherhood, or ministry.  I know this is the longest blog post ever, but I just can’t say it more clearly or concise than he:           

“Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him…. A worker who lacks this serious concentration on God is apt to become overly burdened by his work.  He is a slave to his own limits, having no freedom of his body, mind, or spirit. Consequently, he becomes burned out and defeated.  There is no freedom and no delight in life at all.  His nerves, mind, and heart are so overwhelmed that God’s blessing cannot rest on him.

But the opposite case is equally true – once our concentration is on God, all the limits of our life are free and under the control and mastery of God alone. There is no longer any responsibility on you for the work. The only responsibility you have is to stay in living constant touch with God, and to see that you allow nothing to hinder your cooperation with Him… But be careful to remember that you have been freed for only one thing – to be absolutely devoted to your Co-Worker.

We have no right to decide where we should be placed, or to have preconceived ideas as to what God is preparing us to do. God engineers everything; and wherever He places us, our one supreme goal should be to pour out our lives in wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work."

“We are God’s fellow workers…” (1 Cor. 3.9)