Here's one of the last photos of the old 100
Huntley Street building, before Crossroads moved to Burlington, Richard and
me, with baby Katherine. It's also
special because I LOVED THAT DRESS.
It was a
one-piece, purchased by my
dear hubby when we were vacationing in Banff prior to children - a green blouson top above a navy blue
straight skirt with the belt
featuring both colours. It became a sentimental favourite. I never ironed the
dry-clean-only dress, but here I was thoughtlessly doing the unthinkable. When
the fabric started to shine back at me, I came to my panicked senses.
I was desperate to salvage the dress I loved. I knew the
skirt was a good length and could be taken up a few inches past the damage. I
rushed to the dry cleaner. The woman heard me out and held it up to the light.
I had missed seeing the distinct imprint of an iron right on the front of the
skirt, dead center, accented with light shining through separations in the
cooked fabric.
Horrors! Just then I had a scathingly brilliant idea. The
top was blouson and there was a belt. Why not cut the skirt off and tuck the
top into another navy blue skirt to recover the look of the dress?
Catching the vision, the woman behind the counter smiled
and said, "Would you like me to cut the skirt off for you?" Thinking her
scissors would be better than mine, I gratefully agreed. She took the dress and
returned with two pieces. She had trimmed the top cleanly to the
elastic, with no fabric below to tuck into a new skirt.
Ruined! My last, best option had been sabotaged. All was
lost. I was about to say something for which I probably would have had to
apologize, when another Voice interrupted.
"Moira,
this is symbolic of your scrambling efforts to keep it all together, and more
than a dress is being eroded in the fray. Precious relationships - our
relationship is coming apart at the seams."
That was it. I knew it was time to stop trying to be
Supermom with a fulltime ministry and two preschool children at home. I needed
to resign from Crossroads and commit to motherhood.
On a Monday night I made the bedtime resolve to write a
letter of resignation. The following Thursday I went to David Mainse with my
five page, prayerfully handwritten testimony. That very day a postcard arrived
from someone who doesn't keep in touch with me regularly and could not have
known what was going on in my life. God's timely hug of affirmation read:
"My
dearest child, I am calling you into a place of rest, into a haven of
stillness." (Home alone with two preschoolers?) "The world can be a tyrant,
pushing and rushing and driving you. You need not yield to its merciless
rhythms. I will give to you a peace that the world cannot give, nor comprehend.
I will place my peace within you. I will draw you to me out of the rush and
confusion and will teach you to enter my rest. Though the world swirls madly
about you, my Spirit at the center of your being is a fountain of stillness and
peace. There, I am closer than your heartbeat. There, you can be still and know
that I am God. Enter my rest. There you will know me. I am… God."
Barbara Johnston wrote: "Once you give up hope in all
your own efforts and quit depending on your own strength, that's when you can
have real hope in what God can do."
King David agreed:
"God
gives a fresh start to those ready to quit" (Psalm 145:14 MSG).
My home is the greatest pulpit for my life's message. If
Mom, who determines the atmosphere, is on her last nerve, she had better not be
pontificating elsewhere.
In the months that followed, I made an amazing discovery: "the rest of God" really is possible, even if you're home alone with preschoolers.