Delighting & Dying in Different Seasons

Let me explain these three posts that appear almost simultaneously on my blog.

I copied and pasted two posts (one; two) I wrote as notes on facebook from 2009, before I started this blog in April of 2010. They both were written around excerpts from the book Womanly Dominion: More Than A Gentle and Quiet Spirit. If you read them first, this post will have more context. I want to make a connection between the two and my current season of life.

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I like the role God has been giving me these past several years at our church. I have been one who is always here in Lancaster. Many of my friends come and go and come back again. I get to support them, praying with them and sending them out, then get to help them connect and settle back into life when they come back. I get to watch it all, and I feel like I'm living in the hub of our church "home" in a sense. I'm delighted to be part of that hub.

This is actually much like my job too. People come in and out of the church office, but Teresa and I are always there. It is very much like my home. The pastors work out of the office too, but it can be more like a base of operations for them (home base in a sense) - for us it is everything, we hardly ever come and go. Because we are so stable, we can have our "ears to the ground" and supply helpful information because we are living life in the middle of the hub.

These two hats I wear - 1) being a young adult who is "always here" and living vicariously through her friends' life adventures, and 2) being a church secretary who is tied to her desk, at times fighting against dullness to keep productive. They quite delight me in how they are connected to something I very much desire in my future: to be a wife and mother. I love the picture that Mark Chanski paints in his book Womanly Dominion of a mom being the hub of the home. It reminds me of my mom and fans the flame of my own ambition to be used by God in the same way some day. But also, in a very currently applicable way, it encourages me in the roles I find myself right now in this season of life.

Just as the first quote from Chanski highlights the delight to be found in this role, the second excerpt highlights how dying to myself is required. As my life revolves around the activities going on in other people's lives, and my own life seems to stand still, I can either be bitter that I am called to die to myself to serve others, or I can be thrilled at the generosity of God to allow me to play a small part of his work in their lives. If bitter in my service, I need to turn to see my Savior laying down his life for me and repent, finding it instead a great joy and honor to proclaim his salvation by following in his footsteps. If thrilled to have a hand in the hub of so many lives, I need to remember in humility that God does not need me, but instead be overflowing with awe and thankfulness that he delights to include me in his great story of salvation being worked out in many lives.

What a joy to make gospel connections with the nitty gritty of life's seasons, roles, and opportunities!

photo: Conestoga House & Gardens, summer 2010

Motherly Greatness

As appears on my facebook:

Motherly Greatness

by Sarah Sensenig on Monday, October 26, 2009 at 10:53pm

I have been really enjoying reading Womanly Dominion [more than a gentle and quiet spirit] by Mark Chanski. I commented to my mom tonight that I think it would be so beneficial for me to read at least one book on biblical womanhood each year or so. If I go too long without a biblical reminder and encouragement for the role of women, the weeds of my heart and culture slowly and surely gain ground without me even knowing, and I start to not only believe lies but act on them. Chanski has been a breath of fresh air, reviving my desire to walk in the role of a godly woman. Practically, I have seen an increase in faith for tackling my everyday tasks at my job, allowed my desire to be a wife and mother be fed and grow in new ways, and increasingly grown much in appreciation for my own mom. I want to share an excerpt from chapter 7 that describes sooo well my mom, and what our family is like because of her. She really is the “soul of our home,” and the “hub” from where all the spokes come and go. Reading Chanski’s description of his wife helped me realize that the fruit that I see God bringing from my family is a direct result of my mom’s full-time commitment to us. It’s almost hysterical how closely he describes our family and mom! I am so grateful for how my mom stayed at home, not only while we were all little and homeschooled, but also throughout our teen years and mixed schooling experiences (home, private, public, cyber, college, you name it!)

During the summer of 2006, we had everybody home for the last time. Twenty-two-year-old Jared was home from architectural school and working for a design firm. Twenty-year-old Calvin was doing an internship with a local brokerage firm and working a second job in the evenings. Eighteen-year-old Austin was working almost full time delivering truck tires. Fourteen-year-old Abigail and twelve-year-old Nathan were busy with swarming summer activities. An ignorant onlooker might have suggested, “Surely there’s no need here for a stay-at-home mother.” Oh so wrong!
These were Dianne’s most demanding hours, as each child was passing through a crucial season of life involving a new girlfriend, or a complicated situation with and old girlfriend, or a vocational selection crisis, or an academic preparation issue, or a health problem like a broken leg and an emergency appendectomy with its related recovery time, or a peculiar spiritual/emotional trial. Dianne would make sure to rise early in the morning in order to be in the kitchen when each one ate breakfast and gathered their things to head out into the world. She’d ask them questions about where they were last night and with whom, and to whom they talked on their cell phones, and what their plans were during the day, all the while taking their spiritual pulses and administering words of wisdom in season.
She’d inform me of the development of each, seeking my counsel. Then, she’d often have follow-up contact with them during lunch, or later in the afternoon when they’d return from work and be off to some other social or work activity. She was a maternal air traffic controller, directing and nurturing the lives of her offspring who were now making crucial decisions that would determine the courses of the rest of their lives. Both the stakes and the stress levels were higher than they’d ever been.
She would talk to me in the evenings. I’d follow up sometimes with long late-night walks and talks with them about themes on which I’d been briefed by my helpmeet informant. Without her maternal perceptions and observations, I’d have been clueless. With them, our parenting labors were on the stretch as never before. We spent many nights crying out to God in prayer for their long-term prosperity. It was my wife’s finest hour as a mother. I shudder to think of the present condition of our children’s lives had their mother’s summer input been basically reduced to a dim sliver of light at the bottom of a door.

I definitely recommend this book to you, especially my young adult girl friends. :-) Let it combat the world's definition of womanhood in your heart and mind, and allow it to inspire you to lean on God's grace to wholeheartedly embrace His high calling on your life for the sake of proclaiming the gospel.

He laid it down on crucifixion day, so that you’d look good on judgment day.

Here is the second, as appears on my facebook:

He laid it down on crucifixion day, so that you’d look good on judgment day.

by Sarah Sensenig on Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 10:08am

I read this Thursday evening, and it completely met me where I was at and so graciously led me to the cross. I was not expecting to identify much with this chapter currently, seeing as it's titled "Child Rearing - Part 2," but it blew me away how precisely it addressed my heart and softened it to the precious treasure of my Savior's sacrifice in how "He laid [his life] down on crucifixion day, so that [I'd] look good on judgment day."
Below is the excerpt from Womanly Dominion:

Every morning, she faced dirty diapers, runny noses, food messes, temper tantrums, discipline problems, clothing piles, and kitchen clutter. Another son was born. Claustrophobic with cabin fever and boredom doldrums, she sighed, “Any twelve-year-old could wash these dishes, wipe these fannies, mop that floor, and pour these Cheerios onto this high chair tray.”
Her mind often drifted back to her high school and college years. “Back then, I was the center of my world. I decided what I wanted to do formyself. My decisions were based on what would please and broaden me. People applauded me on the stage, commended me for my well-delivered speeches, and discussed with me my future goals and aspirations in life. I enjoyed expressing my creativity in the classroom, discussing profound literary themes with my students, and checking offmy responsibilities on each day’s challenging to-do list.
“But it’s not about me anymore. Now, I watch my husband every morning escape out into the wild blue yonder where he meets exciting people, he goes out for lunch, and he checks off challenging tasks, and he enhances his career and his potential. Then he returns home to this less-than-immaculate house and is puzzled about what I did all day, why dinner’s not ready yet, and why I don’t make a fuss about his return.
“Though I’ve given up everything for my husband and my children, I get no applause or atta-boys. I’ve lost center-stage preeminence and become a back-stage nobody.”
Her years in the feminism-infested current had given her glamorous dreams of personal glory. And now those dreams were dashed. Diana was downcast and heavy. She felt trapped. This was her lot for the rest of her life. She was grieving the death of her youthful dreams.
“I basically spiraled down into deep depression. I resented my husband’s success and my children’s thanklessness. I questioned if all of this self-denial was really necessary. It just seemed as if it was asking too much of me.
“Theoretically and theologically, I held to the biblical role of selfless wifehood and motherhood. But internally and emotionally there was deep-seated resistance in my heart. Feminism was like fluoride in the water of my youth, and now I was feeling its poison in my soul. Why must I give up my life to make my husband and his children look good? What about my aspirations, my abilities, my yearnings for influence and significance? What am I, chopped liver? Have I become my husband’s medieval slave? I want to be somebody. I want to be recognized. I want to be applauded too.”
Years later, Diana, who now has five children, admits, “I was in mild rebellion against God. And I stayed there for a while, until I saw those wants for what they really are – the display of my idolatrous, selfish, sinful pride. It was only when I took those deep personal longings and put them on the altar of consecration to God that I began to make spiritual headway.”
Meditations on her Savior burned away her rebellion and brought peace to her soul. In the garden of Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus looked into the appalling cup of self-sacrifice that His Father had poured for Him. He staggered at the thought of drinking it down to its last painful dregs. Instead of resentfully protesting, “What am I , chopped liver?” He submitted saying, “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42).
It’s my understanding that every biblically committed wife and mother must pass through a personal Gethsemane of sorts, needing to come to grips with the cup her Father has poured for her.
Think, dear sister, how the Lord Jesus selflessly served you. He laid it down on crucifixion day, so that you’d look good on judgment day. He was spat upon, beaten, scourged, mocked, stripped, spiked, hung, and forsaken. Then He breathed His last so that you wouldn’t forever weep, wail, and gnash your teeth in hell. He was born, lived, and died with the sole object that you would look good forever. Could it be that this wifehood and motherhood thing is calling you to higher ground, conforming you more to His glorious image?