Mixed Motives

I just finished the 10th chapter of Ann's book. I am challenged and encouraged... and envious, and self-righteous and critical. My life is shot through with sin. Yet, mixed motives and all, by God's grace I can still preach truth to myself.

My husband and I are almost entirely opposite of the major stereotypes of men and women in marriage. I enjoy televised sports much more than my husband. I like my steaks rarer than he does. I GRILL BETTER. He is always wishing men talked more and I am always wishing women talked less and just "did stuff" together. I am a lot less observant about the dirt in our house and he really notices it. That is a big one...

I want to be like Ann Voskamp.

I am a lot like her: I married a Dutch man, I write, I have five munchkins that are being homeschooled, I have chickens, I visit the elderly with my children.

I want to be a lot like her: I want a published book someday, I want to go harder after God (isn't that telling that I thought of a published book first), I want to give my time to the eternal things, I want to be an advocate for Gospel for Asia, I want to reach out to the needy in my community... the list goes on; I am ambitious.

I married a man who values (Thank God!) humility and servanthood. He also values orderliness and cleanliness. God has not called me to be Ann Voskamp and he has not called me to make her my standard. I am walking a fine line, and crossing it sometimes, between being provoked by her example and making an idol of her. My heart is an idol factory, just like John Calvin said.

What God has called me to:

To LOVE God, to love, serve and submit to my husband, to love and train my children, to be a student of the Word, to be a keeper of my home, to be a part and participant in my local church, to be hospitable, and to contribute time, money and prayers to missions work and mercy ministries... in that order.

Ann says "I can bless, pour out, be broken and given in our home and the larger world and never fear that there won't be enough to give."

YES!

And no.

This holds true when my life is strained through the filter of the Word and my husband's leadership. I am not called to do everything. There are times when I would rather be serving God by visiting the sick, giving away my worldly possessions and reaching out to the lost and God leashes me instead (through my husband's leadership) to polishing glass and steam-cleaning carpets.

If I do the first things, when I am called instead to the second set of things, there WILL NOT be enough time, energy, enough ME to give. God places these safeguards in my life to show me and help me flee the temptation of worldly ambition and mis-placed priorities.

It is good for my soul to go lower, to be lower. All God gives me IS GOOD.

As Ann advocates for these good works, she laid the groundwork and built the fences. She is certainly not advocating legalism. But I am, in my heart of sin. I want to do the good works, the public works for recognition, for praise, *of course for God's glory, too*. All this reveals my own pride and intense need for the Cross-applied humility in my life. And so I preach truth to myself. Again, and again and again.

I thank God *now* that I have a husband who likes pristine toilets and dusted mantels. It helps to clearly reveal my heart and gives ample opportunity to practice this truth in my life. Ann said in chapter 10 that she wants "the contentment, the real happiness, the touching of Christ in the work..." and so do I. Even when, or especially when, that work is almost entirely comprised of low servitude, menial work for and to my family.

I want this truth heart-branded: God IS magnified as I become less.

LOVE GOD.

BE HUMBLE.

SUBMIT TO MY HUSBAND.

SERVE GOD IN MY SMALLEST, TRANSIENT TASKS.

COUNT THE JOYS.

TRUST GOD.

BE HUMBLE.