“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.” ~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Today’s blog post is brought to you by the letters A and U and also by the number 14 (carats, that is). Now think GOLD. The way that gold is refined, or purified is a process with many steps.

First of all, you obviously want to start with gold, if you want refined gold. You can’t start with dirt or tuna fish or koi ponds or strawberry Pop Tarts. Only gold can be used if you want refined gold. That’s Step 1. Step 2: Place in the crucible. The gold has to be in the right place, or environment, in order for the refining to take place. This involves location, materials and timing. Step 3: add heat………serious HEAT. First you will need to add some boric acid. Now heat, more acid, followed by more heat, and so on…Keep doing this until the gold is completely melted, however long that takes. Step 4: the gold will need to be handled very carefully as it is poured into the mold. It’s really hot. It can hurt anyone who gets too close. Step 5: the gold must cool completely before being taken from the mold so that it will hold its shape. (http://www.wikihow.com/Melt-Gold)

I think that in life, pain, like everything else, is all a matter of how you are willing to look at it, the perspective you choose, the lens you use when you consider things and situations and even people that come your way. Let me clarify, we all have a certain bent when it comes to the way we see things. I’m talking about pain, and you will need to use a little extra effort here.

First of all, for the purposes of our discussion, you and I are the gold. In order to be refined, we must first have some intrinsic value already. You can’t clean dirt, or rot. You just get rid of it. Refining is a process that takes time, attention, and care. The goal at the end is to have the thing of value be of even greater value. In order to be refined, there must already be value of some kind, there must be some redeemable qualities in order for something to be redeemed. Redemption comes when we are found, refining happens when we are perfected. It is always unpleasant. We feel unsure, unsteady, unclear why this is happening now, this way, for this length of time. We often feel misused, misunderstood, and we see no end in sight. Sometimes we break down under the strain of what is happening to us…like when we lose our tempers and yell at our kids, our spouses, say things we don’t mean, quit our jobs without notice, give up on the dream, drop out of school, tell someone off….like in traffic, using technicolor language that would make grandma yank our ears.

I often feel that parenting is a kind of crucible. Multiple times a day you are faced with the choice of acting selfishly….or even out of self-preservation, and you are given the choice, me or them, now or the future, pay now or pay later. Sometimes, either way you choose it feels like you lose. There are so many of these knuckle-baring, teeth-gritting moments along the way as we raise our kids it sometimes makes us very poor company for anyone else, like our co-workers, friends, church family, spouses, or basically anyone who doesn’t want to hear the run-down on Little Miss or Misters’s last bowel movement. (I love a good pun, and that sentence had to awful ones. 🙂 )

I have wondered many times over the years about the much debated and hotly refuted portions of the Bible that talk about women, some of them more than others, like the submission to your husband part and the part about childbearing as in the increased pain (thanks a lot Eve), and about how women will be saved through childbearing (1 Timothy 2:15) HUH????? Are you kidding me? This on top of submission? God, you ask too much.

But, wanting to actually understand, I thought about it in the context of what the passage talks about, which was a situation in which families were fragmented and the child rearing was not being carried out by loving parents at home. Similar to today, women and men were sold out to the idea of “finding themselves” and such. As is the case today, as the parents “found themselves” the children got lost in the shuffle. This passage is calling Christian women to lay down their selfish desires and give themselves to their children, their tender little babies, who really needed them. Babies aren’t babies forever, of course. This is not an admonishment for Christian women to stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and never learn to read. Kids need their parents. Period. That made sense to me. I do tend to get my back up a little when someone tells me to do something (which, at 37, my mom is still doing). Even when someone tells me to do something sensible or gives good advice, I tend to bristle a little bit. People with knowledge don’t like to be taught, and yet it is against reason as well as wisdom to be this way. So there is a little insight into a long-time struggle for me today. 🙂 Love you Mom. 🙂

Of course as I am now actually in the middle of parenting, another thought occurs to me: childbearing and rearing works out something else in us. I have long held the belief that no one, simply no one, can make me more red haze, can’t-speak-correctly, vein-I-didn’t-know-I-had-pulsing, calling-my-kids-everyone’s-name-but-theirs angry, NO ONE but kids. Thankfully, I love my kids, I mostly love kids in general, it’s just when I get out in specific situations with specific kids…again…that I find my “nice lady” seams tearing a bit. Childrearing holds your feet to the fire. It’s easy enough to say you love children when you have none of your own, and of course know better than all those sleep-deprived, cranky individuals who, unbeknownst to you, are telling their child “no” not for the 5th time as they ask for a treat, but the 56th, in less than 5 minutes, and you just let that comment about “controlling your children” slip only slightly loud enough as you passed their shopping cart containing a car seat, and the entire wardrobe of the child who has been screaming. ALL. THE. WAY. THOUGH. THE.  STORE. That poor soul is just trying to make it to the checkout with a couple of gallons of milk and some semblance of dignity and self-control and is being fought every step of the way. There are the times when the fun money you had set aside is used instead on shoes for Little Miss or Mister who you realized with a guilty pang was wearing shoes 3 sizes too small. No, you will not be buying new shoes for work or lunch with the gang this week. You can kiss that concert goodbye because you had to stay home with a kid (or kids) who all got head lice, so of course you are now a pariah anyway and now you couldn’t afford to go even if the darn little buggers didn’t keep showing up on head after head. (Calgon take me away!) *pause for psychosomatic head itching, sorry*

Another hard thing about parenting these sweet babies is that you have to tell them many many times to do something, or not too. I have had crayon on my walls for years, or pencil or pen, or (GASP) even marker. I have made rules and punished and explained and taken things away, and yelled and screamed and panicked, and yet, I still have crayon, etc. on my walls. Discipline is not a popular thing in our country currently. We do not like to tell ourselves no and we do not like to say it to our kids. It’s uncomfortable to wait or do without, so instead of earning good behavior or a well-deserved reward, we cave to the pressure of a tantrum or whining and find peace for a time…..until the next time, and the next, and the next. Discipline is hard work and you actually have to remember what the point was in the first place. I’m not really a fan of the strict cry it out philosophy of sleep training. However, I have never been a fan of being held hostage in my own bed by a baby, either. Nor am I a fan of Cruella DeVille in my house the next day screeching at my kids and husband. There has to be a balance in everything we do. (1 Peter 5:8)

So, as far as a crucible is concerned, there are times when I think I must be in the fire with the acid being added. Being a parent is an overwhelming undertaking, both for the good, sweet, tender, and joyous moments it brings as well as for all the pain and tears and frustration and heartache. I think, though, that as with anything else, God works in seasons in our lives. There are times when I have been put through life’s ringer whether it be a difficult relationship in my extended family, or drama at work, or health issues I worry about for my loved ones, or the tires that keep going flat on my minivan at the most aggravating and inconvenient times, naturally.

After really difficult seasons, I feel a little worn and tender. I’m a bit more sensitive and easily hurt. I need some time to process and heal. Those times are like the cooling process of gold. I want to come out of these times bearing the form of my Savior. I fail though at other times, and I know that it’s only so long before I am yet again being put through the crucible again.  BUT, as we are to find our balanced stances in life, so God has things well in hand. When we go through these sanctifying seasons, He knows when to ease things and we will never go through alone. 🙂

“PETER, AN apostle (a special messenger) of Jesus Christ, [writing] to the elect exiles of the dispersion scattered (sowed) abroad in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, [aka YOU] Who were chosen and foreknown by God the Father and consecrated (sanctified, made holy) by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ (the Messiah) and to be sprinkled with [His] blood: May grace (spiritual blessing) and peace be given you in increasing abundance [that spiritual peace to be realized in and through Christ, freedom from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts]. Praised (honored, blessed) be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah)! By His boundless mercy we have been born again to an ever-living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, [Born anew] into an inheritance which is beyond the reach of change and decay [imperishable], unsullied and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, Who are being guarded (garrisoned) by God’s power through [your] faith [till you fully inherit that final] salvation that is ready to be revealed [for you] in the last time. [You should] be exceedingly glad on this account, though now for a little while you may be distressed by trials and suffer temptations, So that [the genuineness] of your faith may be tested, [your faith] which is infinitely more precious than the perishable gold which is tested and purified by fire. [This proving of your faith is intended] to redound to [your] praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) is revealed. Without having seen Him, you love Him; though you do not [even] now see Him, you believe in Him and exult and thrill with inexpressible and glorious (triumphant, heavenly) joy. [At the same time] you receive the result (outcome, consummation) of your faith, the salvation of your souls. The prophets, who prophesied of the grace (divine blessing) which was intended for you, searched and inquired earnestly about this salvation. They sought [to find out] to whom or when this was to come which the Spirit of Christ working within them was indicating when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow [them]. It was then disclosed to them that the services they were rendering were not meant for themselves and their period of time, but for you. [It is these very] things which have now already been made known plainly to you by those who preached the good news (the Gospel) to you by the [same] Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Into these things [the very] angels long to look! So brace up your minds; be sober (circumspect, morally alert); set your hope wholly and unchangeably on the grace (divine favor) that is coming to you when Jesus Christ (the Messiah) is revealed. [Live] as children of obedience [to God]; do not conform yourselves to the evil desires [that governed you] in your former ignorance [when you did not know the requirements of the Gospel]. But as the One Who called you is holy, you yourselves also be holy in all your conduct and manner of living. For it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. [Lev. 11:44, 45.] And if you call upon Him as [your] Father Who judges each one impartially according to what he does, [then] you should conduct yourselves with true reverence throughout the time of your temporary residence [on the earth, whether long or short]. You must know (recognize) that you were redeemed (ransomed) from the useless (fruitless) way of living inherited by tradition from [your] forefathers, not with corruptible things [such as] silver and gold, But [you were purchased] with the precious blood of Christ (the Messiah), like that of a [sacrificial] lamb without blemish or spot. It is true that He was chosen and foreordained (destined and foreknown for it) before the foundation of the world, but He was brought out to public view (made manifest) in these last days (at the end of the times) for the sake of you. Through Him you believe in (adhere to, rely on) God, Who raised Him up from the dead and gave Him honor and glory, so that your faith and hope are [centered and rest] in God. Since by your obedience to the Truth through the [Holy ] Spirit you have purified your hearts for the sincere affection of the brethren, [see that you] love one another fervently from a pure heart. You have been regenerated (born again), not from a mortal origin (seed, sperm), but from one that is immortal by the ever living and lasting Word of God. For all flesh (mankind) is like grass, and all its glory (honor) like [the] flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower drops off, But the Word of the Lord (divine instruction, the Gospel) endures forever. And this Word is the good news which was preached to you. [Isa. 40:6-9.]” 1Peter 1 Entire Chapter, Amplified