Lessons in Letting Go: One Mom’s Experience (Part 6)

This is part 6 of Wanda’s insights shared in a recent Wise Women segment on how the Lord dealt with her and grew her faith during a time when her and Joe’s only daughter Amy decided to go to China to teach English. Click on these links to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

One of my favorite Psalms that ministered to me during the days that Amy was in China and the time Joe was in Burma was Psalm 34. It helped me to place my focus on God and not my circumstances, my loneliness, or my fears. Psalm 62 also ministered to me.

By the end of February, I had been encouraged by another mission conference at BCLR, and Amy had made the decision to apply for the University Teaching Program in China for the next school year. My prayer was that God would count me worthy of my calling to partnership with Amy (Phil. 1:5; 2 Thes. 1:11; Col. 1:9), and that He would help me to hold tightly to my end of the rope so that one day in glory we would see the results as we gathered around the throne with those from every nation, tribe, people and language (Rev. 7:9).

Amy’s first blog entry as she packed for China was “How Long is a Year?” In June, 2005, I could say how long a year was. It was one year of birthdays; one year of holidays; one year of email, snail mail, phone calls, and instant messaging. My response: “Great is Thy faithfulness, O God, my Father. There is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.” To God be the glory.

I had had mostly good days, some weepy days, but overall, it had been a year of growth in the Lord for me. He had taught me so much. He had drawn me so much closer to Himself. He had given me a better view of the desires for His kingdom and His glory and my part in that. And, oh, He had been so faithful! I had learned so much dependence on Him and Him alone. As much as my husband loves me, as much comfort as my sweet neighbor Betty was to me on our morning walks, as much as Thalia (whose daughter Shannon also went overseas) encouraged me with her notes, I had learned that only with God was I able to share my deepest thoughts, feelings, and fears. Others care for Amy and love her, but not with the depth of my mother’s love, and I can only share that with Him who loves her more than I do. As I learned to hold Amy more openly before the Lord, I felt Him drawing me and holding me closer to Himself and loving me as only my heavenly Father can do.

And so ended the first year of Amy’s adventure to China. She did return for a second year. She went to the same city where she had been at the boarding school, but moved across town to teach at a university. Some of you know the rest of the story. Amy was on a team with a family with three children and a single gal and a single guy. That single guy happened to be Dave, a precious, godly man that God brought into Amy’s life and to whom she has been married for almost 4 years now.

The song that Amy chose for her Dad to escort her down the aisle on her wedding day was a song that had a line in it that had been an encouragement to me for the second year she was in China. The song is “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.” There is a line in the song that says, “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with His love He befriend thee.” What marvelous things we had watched the Almighty do these past several years! To God be the glory. I could hardly stand still that day as Amy and Joe walked down the aisle to that music and Dave, who never stopped smiling that day, waited for his bride of God’s own choosing.