There will be a day when nearly every person you love, value, and trust, will lead you to believe your efforts would be better focused someplace other than the very thing you know is right.
Daddy and I are working hard to turn your heart to God. We are working constantly to build in you and your brother a compass that always points to His will, His way. We pray often that you will seek Him out, let Him in, and follow His calling.
But this world is a mess. Nearly everyone and everything in it is pointing away from God. Pointing to things like material desires, selfishness, entitlement, and even obligation. Feeling the "need" to possess goods that put your family in debt. Feeling the "need" to reward yourself for what you are supposed to be doing anyway. Feeling the "need" to say "yes" to 100 things that aren't truly honoring to God because someone or something "needs" you.
Once you have learned the lessons we intend to teach you about right and wrong, good and bad, once you are "grown," I won't tell you what to do. I will always welcome your questions and conversations, but I won't tell you what to do.
Each situation you find yourself in will be uniquely yours, different from my life and my experience. I just ask that whatever you do, whatever you decide, know that it matters to God. Know that you may think you made a good decision, and He may show you how wrong you were, and that's ok. Take His lesson and learn from it. Know that every minute of every day you have a decision to honor Him or not, in everything you do. And guess what, big surprise here, you won't always get it right. You will make messes of things that were supposed to be clear cut and easy. You will upset people. You will miss the point completely. You will be completely certain you have asked the right people, gotten the best advice, made the best possible decision, and then realize a month later that you are in a total mess. You will think you have no way out, you will worry about letting people down and messing things up even more, but you HAVE to know that if you stop mid plan because you realize you are not honoring God and reroute to a path that is honoring to Him, that it is best, that it will work out, and that people will either forgive and understand, or they are the wrong people.
We are raising you to have a compass that points to the TRUE NORTH. Trust your compass. Honor your God.
