Building Foundations

Foundations

“It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels, the world is all gone strange… how shall a man judge what to do in such times?” said Eomer.
“As he ever has judged,” said Aragorn. “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.” (J.R.R. Tolkien in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)

The feelings of being in a storybook tale filled my soul. Riding on a gently swaying train that wound through a small hallway surrounded by the Austrian Alps made me feel like I was Heidi on my way to untold adventures. The train whistle blew several times, warning of its arrival to a tiny hamlet of a thousand year old, Austrian village that had literally been built on a mountain. The train pulled abruptly to a halt and the conductor pointed in the direction of me and my friend Gwen and said, “Austagen!” “Get off!” This was our destination. The door of our train opened to a tiny eight foot platform that was connected to stairs that slanted downward toward a dock on the crystal clear lake. There waiting for us was a small boat with a captain, white-bearded and jolly, haling us onward.

We struggled down the steps with suitcases and handbags in tow and giggled as we stepped into this small, bouncing boat. It was a part of the railway system and the only way to get to the small town without a car. As we jostled gently in the water put-putting across the lake, we saw the panorama of the village, literally circled about by tall, soaring mountains and this crystal-clear, blue frigid lake. As we approached the shore of the village, we turned back to see from where we had come. Nestled into the side of a mountain was a very old, castle-like rock home standing boldly against the shear incline of the ancient mountain.

Settling in quickly to our small room at a family inn, we chose to have dinner on a porch side restaurant that looked out over the lake. The quiet and beauty of the hidden village, seemed to clothe our spirits with peace. Lingering and soaking in the solitude as we watched the sun set behind the shadow of the far mountain kept us as we were being slowly overcome by the chill evening air.
Anxious to rise early the next day for hiking and exploring, we went to bed early for a good night sleep.
Sometime, in the dark of the night, I was awakened suddenly by a booming rumble of thunder. I remember opening my eyes and trying to grasp what was going on. The room was darker than I remembered and suddenly the room lit up with a close flash of lightening, after which all was pitch dark again. As I slowly came to my senses, I realized that it was pouring down rain, coming sideways in sheets of pounding rain. There were no lights in the whole view out of our window–just torrents of blowing rain. Again the lightening invaded our darkness and we could see down below that the very chairs in which we had been lounging in on the deck of the restaurant, were floating now in the lake and the deck of the restaurant was covered with water, almost up to the doorway of the first floor. As we looked out fearfully toward the lake, the lightening flashed again. In the momentary light, we observed that the rain and the lake seemed almost to join in the frenzied wind and storm blowing and swirling in all directions. Yet there was a dark form, the only thing in our eyesight, that was not moving–that was standing placidly still in one of the fiercest storms I had ever witnessed. It was the small castle that had been built on the rock almost 800 years before.
The next morning, the crisp, clear sky was as though it had been recently washed and set out to dry. Debris from the storm–floating pieces of wood, deck chairs, leaves cluttered the water. As we breakfasted in a small cafe, we asked about the small castle we had observed the night before. “It is the only house that has stayed through hundreds of years of such storms. It is a familiar icon to all of the families who have lived here for generations–a promise that life will go on in our small town, even amidst the mountain storms.
What a picture this became to me over the years of what I wanted our family to portray–strength, soundness, stability–a fortress of all that is beautiful, good, true in the midst of a culture filled with the storms of post-modernism, godlessness, idolatry, immorality, shallowness of commitment, vanity. We have pictured and prayed that our home would be an unmovable fortress of truth and a haven of righteousness for all who would come here.
However, amidst the traveling I have done to so many places, I have observed that many sweet moms are committed to doing the best with their children, and yet flounder in building a foundation. The distraction of school goals get in the way of spiritual and life goals. Yet, since I have three older children who have forayed into life, I have seen that they have been met with challenge after challenge to their faith, morality, beliefs, values with onslaught after onslaught. By God’s grace and prayer, so far they have been able to retain their faith, and grow in their love for God and His ways and they are all standing in the midst of the cultural storms to forge their own messages and stands in their young adulthood. But, i think it is because of the foundations that they, like the little castle on the mountain, have as a secure base from which to withstand the storms. I could write a whole book on the topic, but for the moment, I want to just outline several areas of foundation that I think must be established. Perhaps I will elaborate on these when I have more time. So many times, mothers of teenagers have told me, “I wish I had worked harder on my relationship with my children and on their character and on their convictions, instead of worrying so much about the other stuff. I am so afraid we have lost our child. He is turning away from our beliefs.”

Now, we all need to pray for each other and do our best and resist guilt or legalism. I have suffered through some seasons myself just hoping our children would not fall away. I, like Job, find myself constantly in the presence of God, praying for the souls of my children, lest they be tempted to fall away from pleasing  God. Yet, I just wish, that as a young mother I had realized how very  important it was to really focus above all else on my children’s hearts and souls.  So these are a few priorities I have evaluated for myself as the areas I consider more important than the other goals.

1. The Word of God Psalm 119: 99-101 tells us of a secret that is available to any person who is diligent. “Thy commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine. I have more insight than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditations. I understand more than the aged, because I have observed Thy precepts.”

In this verse, we can understand that our children can be even wiser than those who have written books, than those who have PHD’s. They can be wiser, because the Word of God has the only real truth. Yet, we must love the word of God ourselves and be bathing in it. (I devoted a whole chapter to this in the Mom Walk. You may order it from Whole Heart–if you order ten books for a study this month, you will receive the CD set for free. But you must call in the order 800-311-2146. Please wait a few days to give us time to get back in the office.)
Children need a foundation of the word. Their little minds are much more supple and can memorize chapters and chapters of the Bible. When I was in college, some friends and I committed a lot of scripture to memory and to this day, it is what God uses to speak to me when I need to hear from Him.
2. Foundations of Morality and Righteous living must be established in order for our children to know how to find their way through the maze of lies promoted in our culture. Postmodernism is a contemporary way of thinking that deconstructs the traditional values and ways of living life. My daughter, Sarah, posted the above quotation from the Lord of the Rings, when two of the men of the fellowship of the rings found themselves in a topsy-turvy world where everything was coming apart–fragmented–confusing. Yet, Aragorn rightly said that goodness has not changed since the beginning of time, we must hold onto it–in our homes, in the media we allow ourselves to watch, in the books we read.
Children need to first know what moral law and goodness is before they can choose it when they are young adults. The ten commandments, our base values–like in our Biblical Values Devotions The 24 Family Ways. A child needs to have a secure sense of “what we in our family hold as sacred and will build our lives upon.”
3. Children need a solid foundation of love and healthy relationships. I have been studying Matthew 6-8 in my meditation upon foundations. Jesus profoundly devotes most of His words to our relationship with people and our relationship with Him above all else. He talks about forgiveness, not judging, not being angry or adulterous in our hearts, about being a peace maker, gentle,
trusting, praying seeking. Jesus said, “They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another.” I really have seen that though my children have passed through many cultural storms, it is because of the great love and friendship we have cultivated with them–a foundation of deep love and intimacy–that they have come to regard our opinions, our ideas and wisdom about life. In the same way that Jesus gave his life up for the disiciples, we have sought to give up our own lives in service of our children. They are all old enough to see our flaws and to know our weaknesses, but they see Clay and me as the champions for their lives, the ones who believe in them, the ones who serve them and support them. Family is that culture through which God designed such strong ties to be forged, that these relationships would provide strength, comfort, direction for all of life.

As I begin a new year with my children, I am pondering, once again, just how I may continue to build and fortify foundations so that this house, the Clarkson house, may be truly founded upon the rock!