by Jenny Yun
At CrossWay, one of our sayings is “I am responsible for my own spiritual vitality no matter what season of life I am in.” This has challenged my husband and I in the season of establishing careers, raising children, buying a home — and it has pushed us to make some decisions that were really against our natural grain.
Our culture in Orange County prizes security, comfort, and independence, but as followers of Jesus we want to be on guard against this mindset and seek Jesus’ way.
Sometimes that means choosing risk, humility, discomfort, and dependence.
But then, of course, we also get joy.
We experienced this vividly when I went to China for two weeks on a short-term missions trip. I am not the logical candidate for a trip halfway across the world. As a stay-at-home mom of (at the time) 16 month and 3 year old, and being a homebody on top of that, it is hard for me to get away for a few hours, let alone 2 weeks. It really seemed impossible but was done through humble dependence on my husband, family, and CrossWay community and most importantly, a 180 change in my mindset — realizing that this helicopter mom couldn’t let her kids be her highest priority.
To soothe my anxiety over leaving my kids, I obsessed over a color-coded Google calendar detailing every activity of the day.
Finally I had to stop and let go of control of their care, which I had unknowingly held onto with an iron grip. Of course, they all did fine without me and it was not because of my calendar, which was thrown out the window anyway when my older son got a double ear infection.
They were safely in the Lord’s hands. We felt an abiding joy and peace from being in God’s will.
The beauty of our good God is that when we go against our status quo and are counter-cultural for the sake of following Jesus, we are richly rewarded with more of Jesus Himself.