When Paula agreed to become my wife, I remember being overjoyed that this exquisite, gorgeous, brilliant, Christ-like woman would commit to living out the rest of her life as my bride, mother of the children the Lord may give us, and my friend. Truly, one of the most meaningful moments of my life happened when Paula took my family name as her own.
I remember a deep call from the core of my soul, “Lord, HELP! I don’t know how to build a family. What is a husband to do? Whom is he to be? Lord, unless you build this house, we are in trouble. I can barely see today and we have just become husband and wife for forever. What kind of things are in this forever marriage? Lord, we totally trust you to build our lives together.”
Equipped with the Bible, prayer, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, our family and friends, and our church family we set out to build a God honoring family.
Soon, J-man, Q-girl, DTM, and D-girl were born and our family of two became six. The birth of each child re-ignited that deep core prayer, “Lord, build our house.”
The conversations in our house are different now than in the past fifteen years or so. Today we have been talking about life mates, job applications, what kind of cars are easiest and least expensive to insure, and where might God lead each child in their life calling.
I like our family just the way it is. Right here. Right now. No changes, please.
Early on in family life I held a misbelief. In my soul I thought that “Lord, build our house,” was a sort of ‘one and done’ prayer. It made sense to me, at the time, that the Lord would build our house and we could call it good. Done. House built.
More accurately, “Lord, build our house.” is a prayer that continues through until our whole family is safely in the presence of the Lord. I can only imagine how many families this means. If our four children start families, we then have five families. If they each have four children who start families, there are then twenty-one families.
I have never loved my family more and that love allows, welcomes, and encourages the exciting changes each day brings.
It seems that leaving what I know for that which only God knows is a big part of living by faith.
As jobs are found, cars are purchased and insured, and life callings are developed we will always find our souls anchored in the prayer of Psalm 127, “Lord, please build our house.”