Each week, I’m going through a devotion in Devotions for Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas. This devotion focused on how we may feel inadequate as parents or that we don’t have “what it takes” to be a good parent. We all deal with self-doubt, especially in our capitalist society, which generally places our self-worth on what money, time, or skills on what we can contribute.
Thomas encourages us to remember that God is sovereign and they* have placed our children in our care instead of someone else’s. He speaks to our insecurities and reminds the reader that they “who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Philippians 1:6). God can give us what we need to be the best parent for our children. Of course, this idea can apply to any aspect in life, not just children and parenthood: relationships, careers, communities. When we face doubt, we can remember God is in control and we can draw strength from them.
Many people take comfort in the idea that God is in control and orchestrating the lives of all human beings. Others have a hard time conceptualizing what that means, or accepting all the implications of such a mindset. If God is in control, then why do people suffer? Did God intentionally choose one person for a luxurious life in a rich area and another person for a life of hardships in an underdeveloped country?
I think it’s more nuanced than that. I don’t think we should simplify God and their will to a figure like Zeus. Maybe God’s will is actually our will, because God is in each of us. We can choose to manifest his love and create heaven on earth, or we can choose to reject the godly part of us and live in hell.
Maybe other religions and spiritual walks have a different name for the same thing. Maybe God’s will is what the Taoists call the Tao, which “gives birth to all beings, nourishes them, maintains them, cares for them, comforts them, protects them, takes them back to itself, creating without possessing, acting without expecting, guiding without interfering” (Tao Te Ching, ch. 51).
Maybe God’s will is the sometimes eerie synchronicity of our lives. I can see this will moving in my family as we walk a spiritual path together. We often discover we’re reading similar books or studying similar topics without having spoken to each other about them before. This happens in smaller ways too, like deja vu, people who call right when you’re thinking about them, or meeting someone who had a similar childhood as you.
Or maybe God’s will is a combination of all these things. This idea appears in Joseph Campbell’s summary of Schopenhauer’s essay, “On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual”:
When you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist… The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers
Whether we think of God as a being making intentional choices about lives, a force that connects us all, or the single dreamer dreaming all of our dreams, we can rest in it. As we start families, join in love, pursue careers, write novels, or travel the world, we’re moving down the river of life towards the ocean from where we all came.
We can rest in God’s will, knowing we belong wherever we are. We can rest, knowing we will gain whatever we need if we’re faithful to ourselves and to others. When it comes to parenthood, I can rest in the knowledge that I’m the right mother for Aurora. When it comes to other areas of my life, too, I embrace the idea that I’ve been given these opportunities for a purpose, as part of the all-encompassing canvas of life.
*I chose to use the pronoun “them” to reference God because I like the way it captures the multi-faceted, genderless qualities of God.
I love the Tao quote – it’s like a perfect description of what we are as parents!