Clarifying the sacrifice.

My daughter asked me yesterday what the word “diverge” meant. I told her that it meant to suddenly veer off in a new direction. This conversation popped back into my head today after I shared with a friend how my life had seemed to be on a course, when, with the revealing of twins in my womb, I was abruptly set on a different path leading to unknown places.

God seemed to be opening doors for me to walk through; doors that utilized abilities and tapped into passions I carry inside me that long to be used, grown and relayed. And in an instant, all of life came to a screeching halt as I was brought face-to-face with a future filled with unknown territory and demands.

I feel like I stopped moving my feet and simply was left to look longingly at the open doors in front of me that now seem too far out of reach.

You know, motherhood requires a lot of self-sacrifice; daily you are called to set aside your needs and wants to tend to others. My daughter wanted to make breakfast for everyone the other day and when she finally headed to the breakfast table with her own plate of cold food, she sighed and said, “I don’t think I’m going to do that again.” But motherhood asks you to “do that again”; to lay yourself aside again and again for the sake of others you love. And I am grateful to learn this sacrificial love, and to wrestle for the heart of gratitude that allows me to do it without resentment or discontent.

And I have been looking at this situation of a twin pregnancy meeting open doors that I must walk past as a sacrificial act of love; where I set aside the gifts and abilities that would have been used and grown there for a different season that I have been called to.

But I’ve been looking at it the wrong way.

I often think of the gifts and abilities that I’ve gained over the years of walking with the Lord as being things He uses or doesn’t use as He desires. After all, they’re His, not mine, and exercised outside of His anointing and presence they could bring about no fruit for the Kingdom. And if I am not in a season where He asks me to sing on the worship team, or use my graphic design skills, or be involved in trafficking outreach, or lead prayer gatherings, then I feel like my gifts and abilities are left dormant until He calls them up again. I try to be faithful in every season; willing to be used in little or in much, submitted to His hands.

But God never told me to set aside the abilities and giftings I have gleaned from one season as I move to another. I’m to carry them with me…to find ways to bring them into the next place I must stand. I don’t think I’ve done that well. I may never sing on a worship team again, but that doesn’t mean the songs I’ve written shouldn’t echo off the walls of my own home. I may never lead a prayer meeting again, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be leading my own chlidren into lives of intersession. I may never join a creative round table again, but that doesn’t mean I can’t teach my children the power of visual advocacy and creatively displaying ideas. I may never teach women the Word, but that doesn’t mean teaching my future women is any less a gift.

God never asked me to sacrifice my gifts and abilities when I change seasons.

So what did I ACTUALLY set aside when I diverged from the path I thought was being laid out in front of me? My own idea of what things would look like; what I, with my limited imagination, could visualize. When I look at it that way, I find that’s actually not a hard thing for me to sacrifice; I’ve learned over the last 15 years that as unusual or unexpected as God’s ways may be, they are always better than my own. His desires, His way. That’s what I want.

And I’m grateful to shake off the pain of “self” from this diverged path; because the destination to where I walk is certainly a place of gain, not of loss.