My cold is moving into my chest, I’ve been up since 3:30 and tomorrow the first school group of the fall is arriving and I need to have my ducks in a row today. Please pray for clarity of mind today. Thank you
Praying for you, Kare. And thank you for your comment at the end of yesterday’s prayer thread. I appreciate your prayers for my daughter (2nd Arrow) and me. She’s always been more of a Daddy’s girl (and I think it’s neither unusual nor problematic that children often tend to identify more with one parent than the other), and I don’t resent that. But it seems she has been gradually losing her “other-centered” nature she once possessed (as far as with her family), and, sadly, her dad has gotten irritated with her, too, a few times since having left home a couple years ago. In some ways, she doesn’t seem like the girl we used to know.
So prayers for our relationships with her (both mother-daughter and father-daughter) are appreciated.
Also, I would like to request prayer for heer relationship with the Lord. (I should clarify that when I said on the prayer thread yesterday that she wants nothing to do with the kind of life I’m living, I don’t mean that to sound like she has thrown off Christianity, because she hasn’t.) However…
I don’t have time to share many details, but she has not found a church home (and hasn’t actively pursued getting one, either, even though we’ve researched a lot of possibilities for her in the area she now lives). She’s lived in the same general area for the last five months, and though she was very busy working full-time in addition to her 40-hour-per-week unpaid internship from April through June, her schedule now is not nearly as hectic as it was for the first two months. But she continues to make excuses why she hasn’t looked into it much.
She has met with much earthly success in her recent endeavors, but it is crowding out time with the Lord, and she does not seem all that bothered by it. The parable of the sower and the seed comes to mind, with the cares of this world appearing to be her primary concern. 😦
Please pray that she will desire to be back in the Word regularly and want to gather with fellow believers again. Thank you.
Not major, but I slept poorly last night and have had a headache all day, which is getting worse. I’m hoping it won’t make for bad sleep a second night in a row. Also, that it won’t cause problems for driving, which I have to do to get 4th Arrow to and from a class at church tonight. Thanks.
I have been where you are now, 6 arrows. Will be praying that your daughter sees the truth and that it becomes HER’S. I will pray for patience and wisdom for you.
6 Arrows, I understand your concern. There may be other causes for your daughter’s pullback. I remember feeling detached from my church during and after my nursing studies. Quite frankly, they were out of touch with the issues I had to face among my classmates and patients. I might have stopped going, I was feeling so disillusioned; but the pastor and his wife, on their initiative, met with me one on one. That singling me out, as an adult, for intelligent conversation and personal sharing, met the need I had to be heard.
Also, and here I make a confession of my own sins, I don’t know why, but having lived away from home has actually brought me into conflict with my father. My mother and I are best of friends, but my father and I lock horns more frequently than I like to admit. That never used to happen. Part of it may be that we are too much alike – I get my photographic memory and thirst for facts from my father.
The other part is, that I do not think he quite knows what to do with an adult daughter – I think unconsciously, even though I have lived on my own, supported myself, made my own decisions, and even gone to Africa, when I get back under his roof, he reverts to father-of-child-mode. Of course I, wrongly, immediately jump to my own defense when he asserts himself like that – instead of quietly reminding him that I can think for myself. My mother, though I still honour her as my mother, treats me like an equal usually, and apologizes when she forgets. My father has a harder time – though, in his defense, he will acknowledge that I have the right to be autonomous – he just doesn’t realize how he comes across most times.
Roscuro, I appreciate your perspective and your confession.
When my daughter moved away from home two years ago to attend school and live with her aunt, there was a church only one block away that was of our synod. My daughter attended the church once or maybe a time or two more, but, at age 19, there were hardly any (or no other at all) young adults. But the problem was not so much the ages of the congregants, but that not one person ever spoke to her there. It was a fairly small congregation, too, so it’s not like she would have been virtually unseen in a large crowd before and after the services. She felt very out of place as a young, single woman to whom no one wanted to speak.
So she started attending at her aunt and cousin’s church, and felt more welcome there. There would have been some doctrinal issues, though, as the preachers, a husband and wife, had more liberal religious leanings.
She also would sometimes go to church with friends at other churches. So she was bouncing around a fair amount, and, I suspect, though I didn’t ask, that those nearly two years that she lived in that city, she may have stopped attending church regularly. She was going to school, working two jobs, and her only day off was a weekday. So, depending on what time her Sunday shift was (it varied), she may not have been able to attend church some weeks at all.
That’s a blessing your pastor and his wife took the initiative to meet with you. I wish that had been the case with my daughter at the first church she attended; I think that would have made a big difference for her.
Thanks for sharing about the dynamics of your relationship with your father and with your mother, now that you have been away from home. To a certain extent, I would have to say that, like your dad, my husband and I also are still learning the ropes about how to relate to our adult children, especially since the oldest (a son) is still at home, and the second (the daughter of whom I speak) has moved out and does not plan to ever move back home. Those two also have very different personalities, so navigating the waters for us as parents under those circumstances and with four minor children, also, is, let’s just say, a learning adventure. 😉 Giving our adult children their rightful freedom, yet challenging them to think beyond themselves, something we had tried to instill in them as they grew up, is a real balancing act that requires wisdom. We’re all kind of learning this together, and there have been, and probably will be more bumps ahead in the road.
One thing that I should not assume, though, that I admittedly have, is that my daughter must not be reading her Bible since she has not been going to church in recent months. Of course it is possible that she’s not reading it, but then again, maybe she is. She had a daily habit of Bible reading established at one time while she was still living at home, and I remember seeing a verse or two written out and taped to her mirror in her bedroom when she was living with her aunt. That is something I could ask her about and encourage her in, to at least read a little from her Bible each day, even if her work schedule sometimes gets in the way of attending worship services.
Thanks so much for your input, Roscuro, and for your prayers, as well.
Wandering Views 
My cold is moving into my chest, I’ve been up since 3:30 and tomorrow the first school group of the fall is arriving and I need to have my ducks in a row today. Please pray for clarity of mind today. Thank you
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praying with you.
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Praying for you, Kare. And thank you for your comment at the end of yesterday’s prayer thread. I appreciate your prayers for my daughter (2nd Arrow) and me. She’s always been more of a Daddy’s girl (and I think it’s neither unusual nor problematic that children often tend to identify more with one parent than the other), and I don’t resent that. But it seems she has been gradually losing her “other-centered” nature she once possessed (as far as with her family), and, sadly, her dad has gotten irritated with her, too, a few times since having left home a couple years ago. In some ways, she doesn’t seem like the girl we used to know.
So prayers for our relationships with her (both mother-daughter and father-daughter) are appreciated.
Also, I would like to request prayer for heer relationship with the Lord. (I should clarify that when I said on the prayer thread yesterday that she wants nothing to do with the kind of life I’m living, I don’t mean that to sound like she has thrown off Christianity, because she hasn’t.) However…
I don’t have time to share many details, but she has not found a church home (and hasn’t actively pursued getting one, either, even though we’ve researched a lot of possibilities for her in the area she now lives). She’s lived in the same general area for the last five months, and though she was very busy working full-time in addition to her 40-hour-per-week unpaid internship from April through June, her schedule now is not nearly as hectic as it was for the first two months. But she continues to make excuses why she hasn’t looked into it much.
She has met with much earthly success in her recent endeavors, but it is crowding out time with the Lord, and she does not seem all that bothered by it. The parable of the sower and the seed comes to mind, with the cares of this world appearing to be her primary concern. 😦
Please pray that she will desire to be back in the Word regularly and want to gather with fellow believers again. Thank you.
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*her
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Not major, but I slept poorly last night and have had a headache all day, which is getting worse. I’m hoping it won’t make for bad sleep a second night in a row. Also, that it won’t cause problems for driving, which I have to do to get 4th Arrow to and from a class at church tonight. Thanks.
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Kare, how did it go today?
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I have been where you are now, 6 arrows. Will be praying that your daughter sees the truth and that it becomes HER’S. I will pray for patience and wisdom for you.
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Thank you so much, Kathaleena.
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Thanks for asking, Chas, it went okay. I’m extremely tired though
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6 Arrows, I understand your concern. There may be other causes for your daughter’s pullback. I remember feeling detached from my church during and after my nursing studies. Quite frankly, they were out of touch with the issues I had to face among my classmates and patients. I might have stopped going, I was feeling so disillusioned; but the pastor and his wife, on their initiative, met with me one on one. That singling me out, as an adult, for intelligent conversation and personal sharing, met the need I had to be heard.
Also, and here I make a confession of my own sins, I don’t know why, but having lived away from home has actually brought me into conflict with my father. My mother and I are best of friends, but my father and I lock horns more frequently than I like to admit. That never used to happen. Part of it may be that we are too much alike – I get my photographic memory and thirst for facts from my father.
The other part is, that I do not think he quite knows what to do with an adult daughter – I think unconsciously, even though I have lived on my own, supported myself, made my own decisions, and even gone to Africa, when I get back under his roof, he reverts to father-of-child-mode. Of course I, wrongly, immediately jump to my own defense when he asserts himself like that – instead of quietly reminding him that I can think for myself. My mother, though I still honour her as my mother, treats me like an equal usually, and apologizes when she forgets. My father has a harder time – though, in his defense, he will acknowledge that I have the right to be autonomous – he just doesn’t realize how he comes across most times.
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Roscuro, I appreciate your perspective and your confession.
When my daughter moved away from home two years ago to attend school and live with her aunt, there was a church only one block away that was of our synod. My daughter attended the church once or maybe a time or two more, but, at age 19, there were hardly any (or no other at all) young adults. But the problem was not so much the ages of the congregants, but that not one person ever spoke to her there. It was a fairly small congregation, too, so it’s not like she would have been virtually unseen in a large crowd before and after the services. She felt very out of place as a young, single woman to whom no one wanted to speak.
So she started attending at her aunt and cousin’s church, and felt more welcome there. There would have been some doctrinal issues, though, as the preachers, a husband and wife, had more liberal religious leanings.
She also would sometimes go to church with friends at other churches. So she was bouncing around a fair amount, and, I suspect, though I didn’t ask, that those nearly two years that she lived in that city, she may have stopped attending church regularly. She was going to school, working two jobs, and her only day off was a weekday. So, depending on what time her Sunday shift was (it varied), she may not have been able to attend church some weeks at all.
That’s a blessing your pastor and his wife took the initiative to meet with you. I wish that had been the case with my daughter at the first church she attended; I think that would have made a big difference for her.
Thanks for sharing about the dynamics of your relationship with your father and with your mother, now that you have been away from home. To a certain extent, I would have to say that, like your dad, my husband and I also are still learning the ropes about how to relate to our adult children, especially since the oldest (a son) is still at home, and the second (the daughter of whom I speak) has moved out and does not plan to ever move back home. Those two also have very different personalities, so navigating the waters for us as parents under those circumstances and with four minor children, also, is, let’s just say, a learning adventure. 😉 Giving our adult children their rightful freedom, yet challenging them to think beyond themselves, something we had tried to instill in them as they grew up, is a real balancing act that requires wisdom. We’re all kind of learning this together, and there have been, and probably will be more bumps ahead in the road.
One thing that I should not assume, though, that I admittedly have, is that my daughter must not be reading her Bible since she has not been going to church in recent months. Of course it is possible that she’s not reading it, but then again, maybe she is. She had a daily habit of Bible reading established at one time while she was still living at home, and I remember seeing a verse or two written out and taped to her mirror in her bedroom when she was living with her aunt. That is something I could ask her about and encourage her in, to at least read a little from her Bible each day, even if her work schedule sometimes gets in the way of attending worship services.
Thanks so much for your input, Roscuro, and for your prayers, as well.
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And I was going to add, Roscuro, that your parents are blessed to have a daughter who seeks after wisdom as you do.
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