The Frantz Family: What she wants to be...

We go to a weekly women's Bible study every Wednesday morning. While I'm discussing the week's passage and listening to a lecture on it, my kids are downstairs being taught a similar lesson to the one I am studying. It's a really wonderful set up, and the kids and I look forward to it every week. This past week we studied Ephesians 2 and 3, and today my kids were learning a lesson based around Ephesians 2:10,

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Their story was about Dr. Luke from Acts and how God had saved him for a specific work, accompanying Paul in his missionary journeys. At some point during the day, one of Madeline's teachers asked her, "If God saves you, what do you think is the job he has for you to do?" Essentially... what do you want to be when you grow up? As Maddie's teacher told me her reply, my eyes kind of teared up. "Mrs. Thompson," Maddie said, "I think God wants me to be a mommy." Now she could have said a lot of things, many I would actually expect her to say above the answer she gave; a doctor, a teacher, a nurse, a princess :), and all those things would be just fine. But she said "a mommy." And that blessed this momma's heart!

Actually God used it to remind me of the "work" he has called me to. See, this week as I came across Eph. 2:10 the question was asked, "What are some good works that you believe God has prepared for you to do at this time?" My immediate answer was that my primary "good work" is as a wife and mother. It got me to thinking how different my response is to this question today than it even was about 6 years ago when I was studying Ephesians with another group of girls. Then I was a seminary student studying to be a missionary. I believed the "work" God was preparing me to do then was to go overseas and share the gospel with an unreached people group.

Well, God intervened, and here I am 6 years later, a stay at home mom to three kids three and under. Honestly, in the day to day grind of changing yet another diaper, picking up another toy that's been left in the hall for me to trip over, and reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" for the fifteenth time, I wonder, "God is this all that you have for me to do today?" Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being a stay at home mom and wouldn't' trade it for the world! But sometimes compared to the grandeur (in my mind) of people living as missionaries, writing books, speaking to a conference hall packed with college kids about the gospel, my life seems very small. I was sharing this with my Bible study group today, and one of the girls said, "you know, even Spurgeon had a mother."

Not that my children are going to be Spurgeon or one of the "great" leaders of their time, honestly, I don't know what God will call them to do. What I do know is that God has given me the "work" to nurture them and train my children up to know and love him. Day in and day out I have the opportunity to teach them about a Father who so mercifully loved them that he sent a Savior, his Son, to pay for their sins so that he might use them for a "good work" to praise and glorify him. And as I try to live out that gospel in front of them faithfully I pray that he will use my "good work" to bring them to a saving faith in Jesus. . What amazing job to be called to, and what an honor it is to be entrusted with these three little, precious lives! Hopefully Madeline will be a mommy one day who will do the same with her children.

-I know I have a lot of blogging to "catch up" on, but I didn't want to forget this one, and I didn't want Madeline to either.