Contentment or Duty? Woman Come Home Part 3

So we were studying 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Chronicles 17 in the women's Bible study. It tells about King David wanting to build a temple, and God's response to him. God says (and I paraphrase), "Have I been complaining about not having a house of cedar? Have I asked for one? It is not you who will build me a house to dwell in...I will build for you a house. I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for me...I will not take my steadfast love from him, but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever..."

I am not one to put much stock in what I think I hear God saying to me, because I have ended up being wrong too many times. But in this instance God's message to me was clear as crystal. He was saying, "All these activities you are involved in, that you are trying to do for my name? They are good things. They just aren't what I have in mind for YOU. I have others in mind for them. I have given you children, and a home, and I will raise up others from your house to do those things, to carry out the pro-life message, to save babies, to spread the gospel, to change the world. You concentrate on your own house, and I will bless the results. You plant and water your seeds there, focus on your children, and I will cause the growth."

Oh how I argued with God then. I said, "But God, I have already made all these new commitments. I can't be flaky. Surely you don't want me to flake out?!" and I didn't pay heed. Oh how I wish I had listened.

Within months I fell ill with mycoplasmal bronchitis, followed by hypothyroidism, followed by fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. Twenty-one years later, I am still sick, often house-bound by the symptoms. I am convinced God placed a severe mercy on me, to stop the treadmill I was on and give my heart to my children. He loves those whom he chastens.

So is it contentment or duty that drives me in my service at home? Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other. When I am not content, I do what I know is right, out of duty, but most of the time I love what I do at home. It gives me plenty of scope for the imagination, to take dominion right here on our acre of wooded ground. I only grieve that my health doesn't allow me to do more, but I know my worth is not defined by what I do so much as who I AM, in Christ.

And now, I have an eighteen-year-old daughter who has won national awards for her speaking up for the right to life. She visits college campuses and spreads the message of life. God has fulfilled his promises to me. God is good.