I had just finished speaking one evening at a fairly small church in southern Indiana and was packing up my laptop to leave when I glanced up to see a woman standing in the foyer, apparently waiting for me. I’ve learned to be pretty good at deciphering what kind of response I’m about to get from folks, just by watching their mannerisms, facial expressions and body language. But this lady was a tough read. She was clearly a younger woman, perhaps in her late 30s, but her features were worn and she looked tired. Exhausted, really.
As I picked up my bag and began to walk her way, she moved towards me and asked if she could talk to me for a second. I had barely sat my things down onto the ground before she just fell apart. Tears were pouring down her face and she was apologizing profusely for being so overly emotional. I tried to comfort her, motioning at the minister off in the distance for a box of tissues. Honestly it took her several minutes before she could compose herself. With her minister standing beside her for support, she began, “There was a time I would have hated your message tonight.”
I quickly started thinking through the various topics I brought up that evening, wondering what it was I said that might have been controversial. My speech that night was about the premium importance of family, and while I included a lot of funny stories and Biblical principles, I was struggling to come up with what part might have stirred her to such a reaction.
She continued, “I am a single mom. I have been for 7 years. And for the first several of those I took offense at anyone who tried to tell me that my family arrangement was not the ‘right’ kind of arrangement.” She lost it again before letting out one of the most heart wrenching admissions I’ve heard: “I can’t believe what we did to my kids. I can’t believe what we’ve put them through. I can’t believe we stole their ‘normal’ because it wasn’t what we wanted. I can’t do this anymore. I am not their Dad. And when I try to be their Dad, I can’t be their Mom.”
To be honest, I don't remember much of what I said to her. It hasn’t been that long ago, and her words are obviously seared into my memory. So whatever it was that I offered back to her evidently wasn’t profound enough for me to recall. I’m not sure it really mattered what I said because I think that scene in the foyer was a moment of repentance and brokenness before God far more than it was any request for advice or counsel from me.
Her words that night reaffirmed exactly what I have always believed about God’s design for family: it is irreplaceable...
