It was another of those nights.
My son needed help installing a game on his tablet. I rendered the necessary aid, and the game didn’t work. It depended on a piece of software not yet ready for prime time. My son was understandably upset at the news. I tried again. And again, to no avail and to my son’s increasing frustration.
It was another of those nights when I sometimes hear Kyle Reese describe the Terminator to Sarah Connor. “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with… And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!”
I decided three tries was enough. Someone needed to stop the escalating battle, and it would have to be me. I told him as much as I left for a hike around the neighborhood. Less than a block away I directed my stream of half-verbalized thoughts toward God.
I am tired of my son’s argumentativeness. The way he just. Won’t. Drop. It.
I am tired of suspecting my kids would be doing much better in all areas of life if I had been a better father when they were younger.
The stream of thoughts paused briefly. These are trials to grow me. A task I have been given.
I am tired of my kids rejecting church, Christianity. Anything to do with Christ.
I am tired of my wife rejecting the Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church we all attended briefly, instead settling for a mainstream, weak-gospel, Bible-illiterate church we all used to attend.
Pause. Trials to grow me, a task for me to do. What am I going to do about them?
I am tired of her side of the family clinging to mainstream, weak-gospel, politically-correct Christianity. It doesn’t matter what church you go to as long as you go. As long as it doesn’t take the Bible too literally.
I am tired of my side of the family settling for their stagnant Christianity. “I don’t need to go to a church to believe.”
Trials to grow me. A task given to me. What am I supposed to do?
I am tired of all the men I know at church, who have their wives and children with them at church.
I am tired of seeing their near-perfect families, with their wives and children all roughly on the same Christian page as they are.
I am tired of how easily they find it to pray and read and study their Bibles daily.
I am tired of how easily they pray aloud, even in a large a group.
I am tired of how easily they can share their faith with others, even with the one or two non-believing hold-outs in their extended families.
My thoughts slow, and a word takes their place. Envy. That word has never come to mind in a situation like this before. But tonight, it is so obviously appropriate. I envy most of the men I know at church because their lives don’t appear to be the mess mine is.
Why am I eyeing what appears to be their greener pastures, when I know appearances are likely deceiving? I should concern myself with the greening of the soil in my own pasture, tilled by the trials and tasks given to me.
Edited for clarity.
waywardly Wayward 