Skip to main content

HOPE - My UP Word for 2015

Image
By

Sometime during the Spring of 2014 I almost lost my HOPE.  I was tired of all the chasing our rebellious son all over town.  I was tired of the daily catastrophes to resolve.  I was tired of asking every day - "What do we do now?" 

I literally threw my hands up in the air one day while chatting with a friend and said I give up.  All of this mess is out of my hands.  I give it up to God.  I will search for help no more.  I will chase no more.  I will pray.  I will stop asking that question every day.  It's all up to God and my husband.

One of our boys had started done the spinning out of control path of school skipping, casual drug use, curfew breaking, brushes with the law, and breaking every family rule you can think of or haven't yet.  We had tried family counseling, pastoral counseling, a big brother mentor, revision of family rules, new school situation, taking away this, taking away that, parenting seminars, books, web pages of advice, extending our time on furlough, and much prayer.  We visited therapeutic schools and were ever closer to the drastic decision to send our boy to one. The biggest thing holding us back was cost, guilt, and feelings of failure as parents.

It was hard.  I didn't always follow through with my decision, but I was getting there.  I refused to let a year go by in the States only to be able to stay we had lots of fun chasing our son around town in the wee hours of the night.  We had to move on for the sake of our other boys. 

We had to have HOPE that God was in control, and that HE would work it all out.

God indeed made a way for our boy to be accepted into a therapeutic boarding school in November.  It took a lot of phone calls and work.  Hands on stuff.  But working together with my husband and with God's divine leading showing us the way to go. 

My theme word for this year is  HOPE.  I have great hope the God will use the time that our son is away at school to work a miracle in his heart and give him a fresh start on adult life.  Over the course of this year I plan to write more about our experiences.  I am ready and willing to share more personally with other parents in need by email. 

Our story is not yet finished. We don' know how the last chapter will end.  But we are thankful to have passed the roughest patch in the road and to still be moving along.

 
Christmas 2014
Hopeful for a New Year


Glad that God is rewriting our family's story
 
Labels:
Location: Sobradinho - BA, Brazil

Comments

  1. God will use this for unimaginable hope in the lives of others. I am praying He does that!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for stopping by! Leave me a message if you would.

Popular posts from this blog

What's Next?

By
That seems to be the question every one asks us these days since we've arrived back in Sobradinho.  What's next?  What are you going to do now?  Where are you going?  A few people ask about how the boys are or things about my grandbabies or parents.  But not too many.  This week three people asked when I could start teaching English to their children again!



So what is next for The Athas in Brazil?  If you were able to attend one of our furlough meetings, hopefully you have some sort of idea.  If not, I'll try to give a brief answer to the big question.

Remember that trip we took all over interior Bahia back in the fall of 2017?  We visited over 200 communities over the course of about two weeks all within a few hours of where we live.  You can back to my post about it and review some of the details here...

Bahia Road Trip

Byron and I plan to begin evangelizing some of the nearest and neediest communities that we visited on our trip.  We came back with evangelism materials.  By…
1 comment
Read more

Pressing On - Marriage on the Mission Field

By
That's us on our first furlough in 1998.  Byron was 33 and I was 32.  No gray hairs, no flab, two cute little MK's.  We'd been married for about 10 years and on the mission field for 4.  We stayed in Winston-Salem that year at one of the mission houses of Pleasant View Baptist Church.  We stayed for a whole year.  Byron worked some for a friend with a automotive repair shop that year and I stayed at home with William who was almost 4 and baby Dalton who turned two while we were there. We traveled together to visit all of our churches that year and made several big trips to Georgia and Maryland to visit with family.

Our first term of service on the mission field had been rough.   Language school, learning the ropes, figuring out how to deal with colleagues, two new babies, low finances.  Somehow we had made it through together.  We were okay and things were alright.  Now we were first term survivors on our way back.

Byron and I had met in Bible college.  We had some classes t…
Post a Comment
Read more

Our Graduate

By
This Friday evening the youngest of our clan will finish up high school and move on to the next stage of his life - summer!  Oh, and then college and what not.

It's been an incredible eighteen years...


Greyson was always a cutie-pie with his blonde hair and blue eyes in a country where that was a rarity.  Word is that when he was around five or six years old on the island camp people would ask to take photos with him and that he would oblige for a small fee.  Cute and knew it?


For the most part he's been a joy, even though he doesn't comb his hair very often and making his bed doesn't come easy.  Perhaps his musical right sided brain could never deal with the structure of making a bed each day?  I'm hoping he'll learn at college!


As the last in the nest, Greyson enjoyed a few years of being an only child.  Byron and I got to take a long awaited road trip around southern Brazil with Greyson in tow.  We made some great memories and enjoy some sweet bonding moments...


…
1 comment
Read more