AS THE FAMILY GROWS...SO DO I

This is my family as it looks today-minus Fred, Erin’s boyfriend-who could not make the trip with her from New York City this year. He was sorely missed.  But we all delighted in his son and newest addition to the family, Baby Kane Foster Clark.  What a delicious, irresistible, cuddlesome armload of pure joy he is!

As I was studying this relaxed, rather impromptu family portrait taken by the photographer of the family, Erin, I was struck by the fact that had we not left the Baptist Taliban with all its consuming prejudices, extra-biblical, oppressive and constraining beliefs, we would probably never have  been blessed with the beloved, since- added members of the family we now so thoroughly enjoy. 

Before.... we had defined ‘God’s Will’ to be whatever was in accordance with our limited, very narrow interpretation and understanding of it. ‘God’s Will’ could only be ‘God’s Will’ if it fit into our box.  In essence, we had created a ‘God’ in our own image.

Even with all the difficulties, inconveniences, perplexities, paradigm shifts and conflicts inherited by our life outside the so-called ‘protective umbrella’ of that church, I can honestly say, “I would so much rather be where I am now, than where I was then.”  

However, liberty is quite uncomfortable at times.  

When the ‘rules’ are not clearly defined and written down for us in black and white, we have to live with and in the tension of many new issues that a more reality-based lifestyle presents.  For us that meant, we had to open our hearts to people we would not before have even given a chance unless they were willing to sell out, lock-stock-and-barrel, to our particular and exclusive brand of belief.  

Oh, what we would have missed!

Unsettling though it be, the rewards of a life lived seeking answers through the individual leading of the Holy Spirit, are indescribably, unpredictably and unexpectedly more extraordinary than any ‘safety’ achieved by living within boundaries set by any mere mortal man acting as God’s “authority”. 

Each one of these new family members, as we come to know them better, has broadened and enriched our understanding of everything that falls under that expansive spectrum of facts blended with faith we call ‘belief’.  And that’s not even to mention how we’ve been enriched by all the other relationships we’ve developed outside the family!

I believe that when we remove ourselves from the position of control, what occurs as a result, as contradictory to long, firmly-held beliefs as it might seem, is paradoxically...the Will of God.

And, as I look lovingly at each member of my family, I am satisfied and happy with ‘what it is’.

'What it is' is real.  It is diverse.  It is honest.  It is unpretentious.  It is growing.

And so am I.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfApBz4_XQk


Sometimes it's best to take the 'long way home'....