The kids and I sleep in one room right now, my daugh­ter and I in one bed, my son in anoth­er. And long after she falls asleep, he and I lay in the dark, lis­ten­ing to wor­ship music, and lis­ten­ing to each oth­er. He hears me pray, and I’ll hear any­thing he wants to tell me.

Last night he told me there are five things he’s lost that he’s real­ly upset about: no house of our own; no money/problems with my jobs; leav­ing his school; leav­ing his friends; the divorce. 

I heard it all and acknowl­edged his feel­ings and his loss. And this was my response. 

No house of our own – Sell­ing our first house was our choice, even though he didn’t like it. And it was God’s pro­vi­sion, because we couldn’t have afford­ed it after I lost my job. Los­ing the dream house is because of his dad’s choice to divorce. But God is still faith­ful. He sees the scrip­tures my son and I wrote on the foun­da­tion and walls, and it comes before Him like Abel’s blood. He won’t for­get. And He will vindicate.

No money/My jobs – True, I have no income right now, and the last four years of employ­ment have been fraught with insta­bil­i­ty and tri­als of integri­ty. But God pro­vid­ed by giv­ing us a place with my par­ents, who are usu­al­ly always gone at this time of year on mis­sion trips. They are also finan­cial­ly wise, and as such, are able to pro­vide for us and pay for anoth­er pri­vate school this year.

His school – I left my Chris­t­ian school after 7 years because of my par­ents’ deci­sion, and went to pub­lic school. God cre­at­ed a place for him and his sis­ter at a pri­vate school that’s the clos­est in atmos­phere and edu­ca­tion to the one they left. They only missed one week of school and were able to start here right away. It seems to be a great school, anoth­er soft land­ing spot for them.

His friends – Change hap­pens. You can do your part to main­tain the rela­tion­ship with your friends, but it’s just a part of life. He can and will make new friends.

His dad and I – We can­not con­trol oth­er people’s choic­es, and our choic­es are the only thing that can lim­it God. Jesus, the Omnipo­tent, was restrict­ed in His own home­town. He could not do many mir­a­cles there because they chose not to believe. And even though He died on the cross, and did every­thing He could to rec­on­cile us to Him, He still leaves it up to us to choose to accept and fol­low Him. Divorce is his dad’s choice, but it doesn’t change God’s promis­es and plans for us. Noth­ing takes God by sur­prise. We do what we learned from what hap­pened with the jobs and the hous­es. It’s the sto­ry of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chron­i­cles 20 – “We know not what to do, but our eyes are on You.” And then we wor­ship, and watch Him fight our bat­tles and take care of everything.

Mark 6:5a (NLT) — And because of their unbe­lief, He couldn’t do any mir­a­cles among them…

Romans 10:9–10 (NKJV) — That if you con­fess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto right­eous­ness, and with the mouth con­fes­sion is made unto salvation. 

2 Chron­i­cles 20:12c (ESV) — …We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You.