Potentiality!

This is a guest post by long-time contributor, my wonderful friend and super-mama, Leigh!

I love the Olympics!  I love everything about them – the excitement, the competition, the athletes, the sports themselves – and every two years when they come around, I watch them vigilantly.  When I was younger, I used to dream about being in the Olympics – specifically in the gymnastics or ice skating competition (this is particularly laughable, as I often trip over my own feet while walking across a room).

I think what always made the Olympics special to me was the potential. The media always highlights a “regular Joe” who trains for the Olympics after school/in between 2 jobs/taking care of a sick relative – last year, the “regular Joe” was an unknown, but this year, he won the gold medal!  It made me feel that everyone had the potential to win a gold medal if they worked hard – yes, even a clumsy, un-athletic girl like me.

Now that the athletes in the Olympics are closer to my children’s ages than mine, the potential has shifted.  Yes, my Olympic dreams are over… but my boys?  It’s a possibility!  Elias with his crazy-creative karate moves (which also double as his break-dancing moves) or his 4 year old throwing arm…. Donovan with his freaky-fast-for-a-2-year-old running speed… They are both untapped potential for…. WHATEVER!  Isn’t that dizzying to think about? (I just pray they get their father’s athletic abilities and not mine…)

As I’ve been thinking about my children’s athletic potential, Junior Asparagus’s voice has been ringing through my head, singing “I am a promise…” from this CD – it’s his voice because I did not learn this song as a child.  In fact, I just started learning it with my kids lately, and the only part that I know by heart are the first four lines.  So I looked the words up online to see what the rest of the song says….

I am a promise
I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital “P”
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learnin’ to hear God’s voice
And I am tryin’ to make the right choice
I am a promise to be anything God wants me to be.

I can go anywhere that He wants me to go
I can be anything He wants me to be
I can climb the high mountains
I can cross the wide sea
I’m a great big promise you see!

I am a promise
I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital “P”
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learnin’ to hear God’s voice
And I am tryin’ to make the right choice
I’m a promise to be anything God wants me to be
Anything God wants me to be!

Isn’t that fabulous?!  Anything God wants me to be! And guess what?  God’s reality for my children is greater than anything I can dream up for them!!!  Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…” Even if I try to dream up potential futures for my kids, or if I try to project my frustrated musical ambitions (or Olympic dreams) on them, God’s plan for them is far above anything that I could imagine!

God’s Word includes another promise… “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11).” I clung to these words after graduation, when I had no idea where I was going – but I didn’t think about clinging to that promise for my children.  And what is our hope, our future?  Christ Jesus is our Hope (1 Timothy 1:1)!

The Lord may not have the Olympics anywhere in my children’s futures – He may not have Broadway, Hollywood, or Mount Everest anywhere in there, either.   What if my sons’ high mountains are mountains of pain or depression?  What if the wide seas in their lives are loneliness or grief?  “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful… (Hebrews 10:23).” Praise the Lord that He is faithful! The promise, possibility, and potentiality that is in my children right now is already fulfilled by the Father – and what ever high mountain or wide sea that will be in their lives they will be able to overcome in Christ – He has promised, and He is faithful!

The thing that I crave for my boys is that they become men of God – that is the potential I want to be fulfilled in their lives.  It would be wonderful if they wound up on Broadway or in the Olympics – there is nothing wrong with those possibilities!  But that they know God and have His life in them…  With God in their lives, they can do anything! Talk about a great big bundle of potentiality!

Will you pray with me for the potential in our children? No matter what the dreams that you have for your children, we want to stand with you in lifting your children up to the Lord (here are some great prayer resources you can look into to help with praying for your children).  I hope that we can continue to watch the potential grow in our children together!