Posted 8/25/03
CYBERCOLUMN:
Bigger, stronger, wiser…
By Donna Van Cleve
I admit it. After a steady diet of troubling news events of which I have little or no control, the urge to stick my head in the sand is very tempting. I can watch or listen or read about it only so much, and then I have to focus on something else, or the uneasiness will pull me under.
When things start to overwhelm me, I tend to cry at the drop of a hat. Not long ago, the trigger was the movie “Shenandoah” with Jimmy Stewart. I had seen it years ago, but with my feeble memory, it was like watching a brand-new movie all over again. It hooked me before I recalled it had some tragic scenes. When they came, the dam broke.
| Donna Van Cleve |
I cried for the death of his children. I cried again for the great loss our country experienced on Sept. 11, and especially the loss of security we’ve all felt. I cried for the precious lives lost in the recent war, and the continued danger and losses our soldiers and peacekeepers are facing daily. I cried for the turmoil in the Middle East, wondering again if this is the beginning of the end. I cried because my son’s job sends him to places in the world where people hate the United States and want to destroy it and anyone affiliated with it. He just returned from Saudi Arabia with newspapers full of anti-American propaganda. I cried for the missing girl on the poster at the Dairy Queen, who was from the same area my daughter and granddaughter recently moved to.
I want someone bigger, stronger and wiser to take charge.
I want our government leaders to have integrity and the courage and wisdom to make the right decisions and do the right thing, no matter how difficult the pressure is to do otherwise. I want them to have the hearts of servants and to be role models in their lifestyles. I want those same things for our spiritual leaders and for their lives to model what they profess. The walk and talk should be no different from public life to private life for them or any one of us, for that matter. And yes, character does count in any life or job, our own included.
I want husbands and fathers to be strong and committed enough to hang around a lifetime for their wives and children, no matter how tough it is to stick with it. I want daddies to take an active role in raising their children, not just showing up for the game to coach from the sidelines. I want husbands and fathers to be the biblically mandated spiritual leaders of their families, churches and communities. Women are tired of carrying the bulk of that responsibility for too long now. If a husband expects the wife to take care of the house and bill-paying, raise the children, take them to church, maintain the car, and be a contributing breadwinner in this day and age of two-income-lifestyle households, what does she need a husband for? That’s not the way God intended for it to be, and it’s not the way most women necessarily want it. But a wife/mother will take up the slack in those areas when the husband/father relinquishes it, allows it or even expects it of them. Praise God for godly men who truly understand their responsibilities in these areas and live it.
I want someone bigger, stronger and wiser to take charge.
And then I remember, God is.
And again, I hand my Lord, my Abba, a burden called sorrows, and another precious load labeled my children, and another entitled husband/daddy, and a millstone imprinted guilt and regrets, and an encumbrance named poor health, and some shackles branded fears, and I can get up and face another day.
Donna Van Cleve is a writer and wife of one, mother of two, and grandmother of Audrie, and is a member of Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin.
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