reckoning

i have always heard it said, "a day of reckoning". in my particular case i will have to say it has been more on the order of months.

i have noticed a trend in my life. its called having children. the mrs. and i are quite good at this particular feat. even more than the actual having of children i have noticed that after each child reaches a certain age, about one, i begin to want more children. this has not been a problem until recently when we decided that perhaps we would not have more children. its not definite. and theres always the unplanned pregnancy ( that i can secretly hope for, except that i realize this is a blog and therefore not a means for keeping secrets even if they are in parentheses) but despite our wants, we have issues like money and housing and health and miscarriage and blah blah blah that we face and kinda sorta lead us to try to be responsible thinking adults when making a decision like having more children.

at times i wonder if i am crazy, times like now when my children all fight the inevitable bedtime and sleep. screaming and crying and fighting to squeeze just a few more minutes out of the day. i know that when they scream incessantly and every fiber in my being cringes and i stare numbly into a wall and wait for silence or go into to shock and fall unconscious... which ever comes first, that i must actually be crazy to desire any more of this chaos. i wake up the next morning hoping against my wifes wishes that just a couple of the kids will wake and visit me before i trek off to work for the day. and then while at work thinking of all im missing and how the youngest is just so old already at one yr and that we do surely need just one more.

each child is just so awesomely perfect and completely unique and make my life just that much more full of joy. and while i understand the reasoning for not having 50 children i cant help but feel like im missing out on so much.

well back to this reckoning. basically my story goes like this. bad guy meets girl, gets saved then married then starts having children. thats what i have been doing the last seven years. the big problem i am struggling with is not the possibility of no more little ones, but what in the world to do now that i am probably done having babies. after all thats what i do. we have babies, raise them to little children and have more babies.

but now theres no more babies and a whole lot of uncertain and untraveled territory ahead me.

my latest assessment of my current status in life is this. i am a kid in my mind, only an adult by age and only driven to be responsible by my intensely passionate need to be everything i can to my family. failure is not an option. i am immature and easily draw by temptation and daily struggling to keep it in between the lines. by every measurement i am where i ought to be, doing what i ought to do. but not because its who i am but its what i have to do. and therein lies the completely vulnerable and bare naked center of me. thats not who i am. i have said many times over i dont know who i am. i know who i should be because the bible tells me. and because other godly men are examples for me. but as for who i am. well let me tell you i have not a d@mn clue and it scares the living daylights out of me...(what is that supposed to me anyway? living daylights, thats just stupid. )

if anyone could tell you who i am and do it fairly accurately it would be my wife. she knows me like any spouse knows the person they live with everyday of their lives. but, when i complain about my self she only encourages me and tells me about the good things i should be focusing on... i know what a stick in the mud huh? yeah so i guess i cant complain there but what im trying to say is despite the fact she knows me probably better than myself she refrains from mentioning anything critical or reproachful, which undoubtedly helps my very low self esteem but in turn gives me a very inaccurate picture of myself due to her biased and filtered feedback.

so in my months of reckoning (i promise not to use that word again) i have have come to some conclusions. while that is not to say i havent more analyzing and searching to do, i have in fact rested upon a few things.

1. i do not know what is immediately ahead of me, but i do know what is ahead of me.

2. i do not know how i will get there, but i do know how i will find my way there.

3. i am not mature, but i am learning discipline, which is essential to maturity.

4. i am not the best husband, but i am a good husband and desire be more.

5. i am not the best father, but i am a good father and i desire to be more.

6. i am not the best christian, but i love God , have redemption through His Son, and recognize him as the source for these little nuggets of wisdom.


in conclusion i find that whereas my seemingly endless introspection gives me more questions than answers, and i am left with the determination that i know next to nothing about me or life, there is one who knows me entirely and can reveal to me knowledge and understanding if and when it is necessary.

it may not seem like a lot, but it gives me hope in this time of uncertainty. if there is one thing i have learned its that what you know and what you feel do in every respect stand alone. KNOWING that God is in control and that he loves you despite knowing every flaw about you is still hard to rest on when you FEEL fear and guilt and hopelessness. reminding myself its ok to be uncertain and assuring myself of why its ok to be uncertain will be necessary to my forward progress into the unkown.