For over 40 years my mom, Shirley Staires, was a loving and faithful wife and mother. She cooked and cleaned and brought order to our home. She was a spiritual guide and teacher for certain but I believe these were always secondary roles to the leading role she played of wife to my dad and mother to me, my brother and my sisters.
Once our family moved to Shepherd’s Fold, the spiritual roles began to come more to the fore but still remained secondary to her role as “mom” and now “camp mom.”
Throughout these years she was always a spiritual person; she spent a lot of time in the Word (not just reading but studying), she was immersed in good teaching and she became a powerful intercessor. But these things seemed to go on “behind the scenes.” I believe that without even knowing it, she was preparing for the person she was about to become.
I would never go so far as to say that my dad (first through his cultural world view, then through his health needs) held my mom back. But, in effect, that’s what seemed to happen. This never even occurred to me, of course, until my dad died.
Since he died in 1999 the trajectory of my mom’s life has been dramatically altered. Someone cut the ropes on her balloon. She’s now a powerful speaker, teacher, counselor and writer. She is influencing lives all over the city of Tulsa and beyond, not only through her twice-weekly meetings (and now I’ve just learned she added another weekly class so that makes three!) in her home but through one-on-one sessions, writing her monthly newsletter, the countless phone calls and spontaneous life-changing conversations that take place routinely on her front porch. You’ll not see her face on a billboard or on television (although she was in the paper just last week) but she’s making a dramatic impact in her world nonetheless.
In short, the life she leads now bears only a slight resemblance to the life she led before 1999.
So what does this mean to you and me? It means that the life out in front of you may not look much like the life out behind you. Never assume that what you’ve always done is what you’ll always do. God, the most creative force in the Universe, is fully capable of taking those talents and tendencies you’ve grown used to and completely and creatively repurposing them into a whole new role for you. And the same goes for me.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve learned that it’s not about jobs or roles. It’s about talents and tendencies. It’s about the destiny or flavor that God baked into you when He made you. God wants to put both you and me into just the right place for our talents to be used to the fullest.
Thank you Mom for your courage to embrace a whole new life. After all these years…you’re still out front setting an example to the rest of us who are following behind watching you closely.
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