A couple days ago as I was treating patients in the office one of them said to me, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Doc. Man, I’m just so impressed with how well you guys have handled this and how strong you have been through all of this!” I stopped and turned to him and said, “No, you’re missing the point…. We’re not strong at all. Let me see if I can explain this better….” The Lord frequently speaks to me through music or through pictures so as I prayed for the right way to explain the unexplainable, this is the visual the Lord gave me:
There’s never a point in your life that you expect to go through tragedy, if you did then by definition it wouldn’t really be as much of a tragedy, you know? So how well you weather the storm and how strong you stand when the waves are bigger than any waves you have ever seen depends on how well you have trained up to now. It’s exactly like being in the military. One of my best friends is a Marine and he served 5 tours over 10 years. And when these guys and girls go into the military they start off at basic training and get drilled over and over and OVER on every. single. thing. possible. This is how you put on your shirt. This is how you tie your shoes. This is how you march. This is how you load a weapon. Now load it again, and again, and again, and AGAIN!! This is how you shoot. Point, shoot, reload. Point, shoot, reload. “Aim small, miss small. Aim small, miss small.” They are trained and trained for months to years on everything possible and given a stable foundation of function and the military is HOPING they will never have to use any of this training. They are trained and train every single day on how to be the best fighting force on the planet and how to handle a battle, but they are hoping they never find out what it’s like to be in the middle of battle. But then the battle comes… Talking to my Marine friend, his stories are awe inspiring and heart-breaking at the same time. But he tells a story of the first time he was in battle. He said that as he was in the back of the armored vehicle headed into the city and the bullets started hitting the sides of the truck and the bombs started going off, his first reaction was to hit the deck and put his head between his legs. But he said, after a second he heard his fellow Marines open fire and he heard his instructors in his ear “Get up and fight!! Aim, fire, reload! Aim, fire, reload!” And he said he did what he was trained to do and at the end of that day he was still standing. And he did that over and over and over again for 10 years.
I told my patient who was so impressed with my strength that our journey with losing Evans was just like this. I have spent my entire 34 years of life learning, listening, soaking, and training on so many things, hoping I would never have to use them or need them. Isn’t that our job as parents?? “Train up a child in the way he should go and even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6. Isn’t this what we tell ourselves over and over and scream in the silence while we are trying to teach our children about the love of our Father and about his promises?!?
But what the Father showed me and told me in that adjusting room was, “See, all the scripture you didn’t understand, all the conversations with your mom and dad you didn’t think you took to heart, all the principles they taught you that you didn’t know if they really got in, every one mattered for a time such as this.” You remember them all if you were blessed as I was to grow up in a Christian home: “For God so loved the world…” John 3:16, “God is love..” 1 John 4:8, “God’s grace is sufficient..” 2 Corinthians 12:9, “He has a plan for you..” Jeremiah 29:11, “God always gives good gifts..” James 1:17 and the list goes on and on and on of the verses that have been sowed into our hearts and minds whether we knew it or not our entire lives.
When the battle comes and the bullets start to fly, you have only 2 choices: 1. Run away and hide. 2. Pick up your gun and fight. When those bombs start to go off near your family, all the training you have done (scripture reading, sermons, pod casts, etc) come back. And you go back to basics.
Do you know the first thing I did when I was on an airplane coming home, knowing my wife had delivered our third baby (didn’t know he was a boy yet) 8 weeks early and had no idea if she was alive or if the baby had made it or anything and the fear and panic began to tug at the corners of my heart and soul??? I prayed. I said, “Father, what do I do?” And He calmly told me to do the three things He had been training me to do more than anything else over the past 2 years: 1. Worship Him 2. Read His word 3. LEAD my family. So that’s what I did. I turned on my Bethel Worship on my phone, and I flipped on my bible app. The verse the Lord brought me to as the tidal wave was getting closer was Ephesians 6:14 “Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth…” At the beginning of our battle, the Father showed me that the very first article of his armor is the “belt of truth”. This belt for me had been woven over the course of my life by my parents and the people God placed in my life to pour His truths into me. This belt had been sown with threads of victory and threads of defeat but had been patched and stitched and made incredibly strong by His Grace and the Love of my Father. So I worshipped Him and I went through in my mind all the truths I knew about my Father. And, I had peace. I knew that no matter what I was going to find when I landed in DFW, that my God had it all under control and would see us through to the other side.
This also brings to mind the parable of the man who built his house on the sand vs the man who built his house on the rock. (Luke 6:46-49). It talks about the importance of building your house on a strong foundation. Building your house on the rock (on Jesus Christ and his truths) will prepare you for when the storms come and the floods arise. It will give you the support to make it through the storm. If you build your house on the sand, the storms that will roll through will destroy your house. And it’s always fascinated me that the verse never said, “So build a good house so that if the off chance of something bad happening….” No, it says, “WHEN the floods come and WHEN the streams breaks against your house.”
As parents, it’s our responsibility to train ourselves first every single day. We have to be in the Word every day so that it is imprinted on our hearts and souls so that when the “Floods rise” we can easily draw it out. (Psalm 1:2) Only when we fill ourselves up and learn to put on our own armor on a daily basis will we be able to pour into our spouses first and then pour into our children every single day the way they need us to. Two of our mentors we have gone to for counseling, named Pete and Debbie, taught us this principle. That every day we needed to spend time studying scripture together and discuss it and that out of that our love and direction would spill over into our children and then our community.
I think the words to this classic hymn say it well.
“My Hope is Built on Nothing Less”
by Edward Mote, 1797-1874
1. My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
2. When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
3. His oath, His covenant, and blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When every earthly prop gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
Another one I love that is from Brian Johnson at Bethel Church says it like this:
“If my heart is overwhelmed, and I cannot hear your voice, I hold on to what is true, though I cannot see. When the storms of life they come and the road ahead gets steep, I will lift these hands in faith, I will believe.”
So parents, be encouraged if you are discouraged right now thinking your kids aren’t getting it and are missing the point. They are getting it, you just have to stay consistent. And if you’re not pouring into them as well as you should, now is as good a time as any to start!
JB