A post by my friend Sarah has gotten me thinking about duty and free will. And love.
Right now, I feel very tied down. Absolutely restricted. But not in any malevolent sense. I am simply bound.
I am bound by the demands of four children. I am bound to spend my waking hours tending to their needs and their comforts. Those take most of the time. I am moreover bound to their education and their sanctification.
But I walked into my restrictions of my own free will. My husband and I bound ourselves in our marriage vows, and the children follow logically.
But it's strange, nonetheless, because though children were what I signed up for, I did not expect four, ages four and under; I did not expect twins. I did not expect this.
So, in that way, it feels like I gave the Lord an inch and He took an ell, binding me to a regimen of hard, delightful labor.
It's a bizarre feeling to be doing exactly what I wanted to do, but without the liberty of doing anything else. I've always believed the maxim, "You can have it all, just not all at once" but I never before knew how few things you might be allowed at once.
Just this. I just need to do this. And do it, and do it, and learn to do it very well. There is no room - or very little - for anything other than my family.
(On a side note: I wish, wish, wish it were possible to explain to anyone who is not a parent of twims just how all-consuming having two babies at once is. It is the deepest blessing and the direst strain of your resources. My mother worried that we didn't know - in our head-deepness - how little margin we have in our lives right now. But I assured her, "oh, we know. Whenever we actually get a chance to talk, that's about all we talk about.")
But what is this one thing I'm learning? What is it the Lord has constrained me to learn?
Love. Love and obedience. I think the Lord decided, in His grace, to constrain me to learn to love and to obey.
And trust. He has taken me beyond my own resources, my own ability, and told me to obey anyway. And minute by minute, He has taken up the slack, multiplied my fishes, kept us afloat, cleared away again and again what seemed to be the storm that would surely drown us.
It is strange, to be forced to practice the virtue you always wanted. I think, if I keep obeying, I won't be able to help becoming a loving person. Not the selfish, crabbed one I was before. But a true Christian. Of my own free will, but only by God's constant badgering, constraining, helping, warning.
As I wrote on Sarah's blog:
On my best days these days, my free will and my necessity are running in tandem, and I’m hoping that when necessity slackens, that my will keeps me going on this straight line of duty and delight. (Not of changing diapers, but of loving others.)That's the thing? Can I keep doing it when I don't have to do it? So far, I don't think so. But I hope so. Someday.
By God's grace alone. Meanwhile, I'll do this. Thank you, Father, for this kindest of disciplines.
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell
