Peace

I'm not going to lie to you. It's been a long day of not knowing anything, and here I'm writing at 9:32 p.m. and I still don't know anything. But I have peace.

I remember an old Larry Norman song, "we need Your strong love and strange peace." (Love Larry Norman, by the way. Love.) And I do, I have a strange peace. "My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, do I give to you." The peace that passes understanding.

But one of the strange ways I've come by my strange peace is through the voice of my children. Now the Bible says, "Out of the mouth of babes You have established praise for Yourself," and "Your young men shall prophesy," and we have the example of the boy Samuel hearing God's voice, so we ought not be surprised when God speaks through them.

Over the last year or so, we have begun to pursue something we call family worship, or a family altar. It started out with just a story from Egermeier's Bible Story Book, and a prayer. We have all our children involved, so we use the story book, not the actual Bible, although I do read that with the school aged children. Anyway, later we added worship, where one of the older kids plays a song and we sing, and we added listening time, when the older child plays a song without singing, and we ask God to speak to us. We close our eyes and wait, not very long. Afterward, I write in a journal anything anyone has heard from God.

And I'm convinced that my children mostly hear from God in what they say. The four-yr-old usually says something like: God wants me to be kind or obey or share my toys "with one another" - which sounds right to me. Sometimes they have pictures that I have no clue whatsoever what they mean. Once Claire saw a flower every day for a week. We stopped having listening time for a while after that, because I didn't know what to do with that flower.

But many times they have words that seem good at the time, and later turn out to be sort of profound. Example: Nick said two different days recently that the birthmom would be "wise". He explained that maybe she would think since we had a bunch of kids that maybe we would know what to do with 1 or 2 more. But he used the word wise, not a word he uses in his day to day. Then last night I was looking at names, for the sake of naming the child, and read the listing for birthmom's name - in the book I was using, it meant wise discerner. The point is not the exact meaning - those vary somewhat with what book you look at. The point was confirmation. He had said the birthmom would be wise, and the name book said she is wise. I thought that was pretty cool.

Today, several of my children just said, this is our baby. But in the middle of that context, with the tide going happily that way, one said, "she might not pick us, but even if she doesn't we'll be blessed," and another said, "I think God is saying 'tomorrow,'" when we had been told we would find out today.

Now that wasn't something I wanted to hear, but I wrote it down and tucked it away. And as the day wore on, with nary a phone call or e-mail, except from people who love me, saying, "do you know anything yet?" And as I was desperately trying to be patient and trust in the Lord, I found I was okay, and had peace. Because this morning, my son said, tomorrow, and my other son said, she might not pick us, but we'll be blessed anyway.

I will sleep in peace. I hope I know something tomorrow. I hope I know a yes. But if it is no, we will still be blessed. I know, because God told Nick, and Nick hears from God.