Weaning

You may think given the title that my entry today is about my son. It is not. It is about me.



Admittedly, I, like many other Americans, am addicted to my coffee. But my vice is very specific. Starbucks. Oh, good 'ol Howie would be so proud. For those of you who are going "Who?" Well, I am such a regular, you would think I was buddy-buddy with the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz. I am not, but nevertheless, I pay more of his salary than I should, so I feel I have the right to call him "Howie".



My drink of choice is a 1 shot no whip iced mocha. Whereas I used to sweeten it with vanilla, now I add the natural sugar and chemical-free sweetener stevia extract. Years ago, my drink of choice was an iced chai, which I occasionally revisit.



The reason for my gradual weaning off of my Starbucks iced mochas is manifold. But it is what it represents in my life that is of real importance. I'll get to more of that in a minute. Firstly, it is an expensive habit. Now I am not saying I am never going to have it on occasion, but I am after all, weaning, which connotes a graduating process. The daily trip through the drive thru adds up and I want to be a better steward of our finances. So I have found out the ingredients to my favorite coffee and I am making it more at home using the espresso maker. It takes a lot longer, which means convenience and time saving factors go out the window. But it is much cheaper and I can tailor it to my liking. This past week I have made my own mochas for 2 days. Next week it will be three, and so on.



Secondly, I believe it will work to my advantage for weaning my son when it is time. Knowing that he will be receiving less and less of something which he loves so much, I will know what that feels like. I will have traveled that path already and know how hard it is to give up something you love. Even if it is gradual. And I think it will make me more sensitive to his needs at any given time during the process.



Thirdly, I am giving up something I love to gain something that is eternal. In my walk with God, I feel Him challenging me to start letting go of the things which I love and have grown attached to in this world. Jesus put it this way, "He who loses his life for my sake, shall find it". The challenge I feel is to live life this way everyday. This is hard. But I have been finding myself lately thinking such proposterous things like, "Lord, I want to live for you and be content no matter if I am living in the palace or the pit. Whether I have nice things or priveleges, or not". And I feel Him tugging at my heart strings like, "Would you be willing to live without.....(this) or (that), should I take it away from you?". If I do it with love as the ultimate goal (for without love we can do nothing, we will be as a clanging symbol the bible says), especially if I do it out of love for the Messiah, I believe it will be worth it. There is a higher way of living. And I intend to find it. The higher way is actually to go LOWER. To gain one's life, you have to give it up. I will give you an illustration of an extreme example of what I mean.



Once at my old church, I heard a missionary give a talk about what life was like on the mission field. What life can be like when you give it up for the high calling of the Messiah. He said he heard of a story of a young girl that took place in a nation where Christians were hated and persecuted every day. He said the leaders of this area put the young girl in jail with the intent to execute her. She had never been married. Never known what it was like to give birth to a child. She had her whole life ahead of her. She was placed in a 6" by 6" cell with not so much as a toilet or bucket to "go" in. The guards would open the door once a day to throw in some scraps to eat. She knew there were other prisoners in there who were not Christians, people who were placed there for breaking the law to be punished for an indeterminate amount of time. Many of them, like her, were on "death row". Now, I was sitting in my seat thinking....how would I cope with that? (At the time I also was younger and had not yet married nor had any children). I would probably be feeling pretty sorry for myself, or in the least, I would be thinking of how or praying about how I could get out of that place. Not this girl. She decided to give up her life, even her dignity, in a surprising way. The missionary said this young girl, knowing of the need for the guards to clean out the human excrement from all of the cells, and seeing that as a way of telling others of the love of Jesus and sharing with them the Way of salvation before they died, volunteered to go cell to cell. They let her. And as she was scooping out the waste with her bare hands, she whispered to each prisoner...."I know of a better way. You don't have to die alone. There is hope." And she thus told them the good news that they could be saved and inherit eternal life, no matter the outcome of their sentence...



I sometimes think of that brave girl when I am facing a challenge in my life, something that threatens my current way of living or something that I need to give up voluntarily. When considering the sacrifice, I ask myself...is this TRULY living anyway?......



"And they overcame him (the evil one) by the Blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and THEY LOVED NOT THEIR LIVES UNTO THE DEATH" Revelation 12:11 (emphasis mine).

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