Draw the Line

We love long, quiet mornings in the Ladd house.

We love them so much that we get up before 5am every morning to fill our coffee cups, read our Bibles and soak up morning sounds before the rest of the world wakes up. It makes the whole day different.

We want to instill that value in Lifa, so we stocked his room with storybook Bibles, devotions, journals, and our personal favorite, The Power of the Praying Kid by Stormie Omartian. On weekends, he stays in his room for the first 30 minutes of the morning to pray, read, draw or write.

Reading to me from The Power of the Praying Kid

We spend many car rides and dinnertimes talking about personal prayer times. Lifa is developing his own expectant, enthusiastic faith as he learns about ours.

One Saturday morning, he came out of his room with a handful of colored pencils and a plan. “MOM. I KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO!!!” He’d been reading his Power of the Praying Kid book and had an idea: “I’m going to write down the questions I have for God, and then I’M GOING TO DRAW A LINE.”

He waved his journal in my face. Each question had its own line and color. God would answer Lifa’s question, and Lifa would write down the answer on the appropriate line. Obviously, God might not answer them all on the same day, so there was a space for each one for whenever God was ready. 

It’s about drawing the line. The line is clutch.

I asked Lifa what kind of questions he had asked God. “It’s stuff about the church, like what the name is going to be, where it will be, how many people will be there, and what it will look like.”

I did my best, but I don’t think I played it very cool (i.e. I screamed, squeezed him and did a happy dance in the kitchen) as it sunk in that Lifa is just as invested as we are in our family’s call to church planting.

A week later, Lifa exploded out of his room and said, “MOM. WHEN I OPENED MY EYES THIS MORNING, GOD TOLD ME THE ANSWER TO ONE OF MY QUESTIONS!”

We had just chosen the name of our church, and Lifa had already filled that in his journal with a checkmark next to it. (Get ready for the big announcement next month!) Now Lifa had his own answer from God he wanted to tell me about.

“I asked God how many people will be in our church, and God told me there’s no number. There will always be people coming in.”

Check. (Proud mom explosion.)

Later that week, I told Lifa I’d been praying for the type of friends he would choose while I read The Power of the Praying Parent (also by Stormie Omartian). Every morning, I drop him off for school in a city where he’s much more exposed to the ways of the world than ever before. We pray for him, and we trust the Holy Spirit to give wisdom and discernment to a 9-year old who asks for it. We talk about Lifa’s play and interactions nightly at dinner and meet with his teacher regularly. We do everything we can to set him up for success and make space for God to parent him much better than we can. We started asking God to show Lifa who to make friends with at his new school during out bedtime prayers.

 

When we got home from school later that week, Lifa ran to his room to put on his cape before he flew into the kitchen for his 431^st meal of the day. (He won’t stop eating or growing.)

I handed Lifa a ginormous smoothie, and he said, “Mom, God spoke to me again today. He said Bruce is very kind, and I should be friends with him.”

Check. 

Just like that, he hears the voice of God, sips his smoothie, adjusts his cape, and flies out of the room to find puppies.

God has told our family to do a lot of crazy things. We don’t know how to do any of them on our own. Every day we see and hear stories of our city that makes us ask questions… Why? How? What do we do? 

We’re pulling out our brightest colors and drawing many lines.

Raising Lifa without paperwork or promise has kept me continuously needing to hear answers from God because the answers don’t exist in this world.  There have been days, weeks and seasons of unknowns that felt like they just might break me.

But I’m not going to break. I’m going to draw a line.

I’m going to pick a question, pick a color, and draw a line.

God drew lines of colors across the sky a long time ago and told us He would take care of us. The answer to every question was painted over us by His hand, and, just in time, God will fill in the space we’ve given Him.

He made the colors, and He is the answer.

We just have to ask the questions, and draw the lines.

A dinnertime rainbow over our new street.

Today, I’m overwhelmingly grateful for a life full of color and lines. I never want to live a life that doesn’t require the voice of God because I like to keep Him close.

Multiplication is Hard

It’s getting real over here, y’all. Fourth grade just got tough.

We are learning the ropes to the South African education system four years later than the others, and we’ve got some catching up to do. (Click here to read that amazing story.) We’ve been ironing school uniforms, learning how to ask questions in class, checking backpacks, meeting teachers, tying ties, maneuvering morning commuters, talking about making the right kind of friends, learning how to use a library, trying out for choir, picking a sport, packing lunches, and learning what happens if you don’t clean your lunchbox. (i.e., Your mom screams and throws a lunchbox full of cockroaches at you, threatening to make you eat them for lunch. Please withhold your judgements. He did not have to eat the cockroaches.)

We hit the first bump in the excitement last week. It actually felt more like a HEAD-ON COLLISION than a speed bump. 

The 4^th graders are preparing for their first national exams. No more reviewing; it’s time to move forward. Memorizing multiplication tables is hard. Really hard. And now there’s DIVISION. (Don’t even get me started on fractions.)

The division did it. Lifa’s could no longer secretly count on his fingers under his desk to try to hang in there with the other kids in class. His ten little fingers just wouldn’t do long division. He couldn’t grasp the new math concepts, and suddenly the bottom fell out on his ability to endure. He regressed rapidly and was unable to hold onto the basics. No counting. No adding. It was like he’d fallen and couldn’t get his legs back under him. He lost tests before he could turn them in, was easily distracted, and couldn’t listen or retain information. Lifa’s self-confidence tanked. His happy, go-lucky 9-year old world was permeated with confusion. He felt trapped inside himself, suddenly unable to communicate in complete sentences. It didn’t help that his mom hit a wall shortly after he did.

Frustration hit me like a freight train after spending another evening in front of homework books with his eyes glazed over. Why can’t he count by 5’s today when he could multiply last week? I couldn’t understand. I was tired. I felt wildly incapable as a mom. Honestly, I felt incompetent as a human.

I committed to raising this boy for God. Did I break him? Did I screw this deal up? My kid can’t count. Or complete sentences. And, for the love, no matter how many times we practice those note cards, he CANNOT remember 2x8=16.

After a solid wallowing in self-doubt and a downpour of failure’s tears, I knew I needed to get some perspective. My handsome husband stood in the kitchen with me while I stress-cooked. He spoke out God’s promises for Lifa today and in the future. He continuously turned me back to thankfulness that we get to be a part of the legwork for God’s glory.  Can you believe God would trust us in the daily grind, the mundane tasks that makes way for miracles? God even trusts us with multiplication tables.

I told Lifa’s teacher the promises God has spoken over Lifa as we rallied together for his good. The stories of struggles, setbacks, injustice and trauma in Lifa’s life were the testimonies that gave the greatest glory to God. It made multiplication look easy. And worth it.

That night I came to the dinner table with new perspective and new hope. I am not an incapable mother. I am not an incompetent human. What an amazing privilege to be called worthy to equip our child for purposes that will multiply God’s glory on the earth. (See what I did there with multiplication?)

Lifa came to the dinner table with a story about his new friend Xavier.

“Xavier’s mom won’t let him go to church. She throws away his Bibles because she said he’s not born to be a Christian. Can you believe it? She throws them away. Today I started telling Xavier stories from the Bible. He already knew Jesus died on the cross, so I told him about Jesus being born, God creating the earth, Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel. He wants to hear more tomorrow and asked if we could do that everyday.”

Lifa beamed. I exploded. Chris covered him in encouragement while I continued to gush and celebrate. THAT’S OUR KID!!!

Over bowls of soup, we talked about different kinds of families, the purpose of the church, and how cool it was that Lifa knew the Bible well enough to teach others. There was no reining in my proud mom ooze-fest.

With a spoon in his hand and soup on his chin, Lifa grinned across the table in agreement with our joy. Casually and purposefully, he looked at his parents, who’d been on knees in desperate prayer for him, and said, “Yeah. I was made to tell people about Jesus.”

Moral of the story:

Multiplication is hard, and it almost got us this week.

But a mom and a dad hit their knees to get back to God’s perspective. Lifa knows his purpose in life, and he’s already living in it. He’s equipped, excited and unstoppable.  

2x8: You will not win.

My kid knows what he was made for.

Being a mom is hard. Being a human is hard.

But we hit our knees. We tell stories of what God’s done and remember what He’s promised. We find our purpose, and live it unstoppably.

Multiplication and division are no longer a threat in the Ladd house, but a promise that there will always be more ground to gain.