My Two Dads

Well, I stole the title from an old 80's sitcom, but the concept of multiple parents is far more common these days, and children in shared custody bear a striking resemblance to anyone who has struggled in spiritual teenage-hood.

So, we have the step-father, the father of lies, the one who lets you have fun, lets you do anything you want, no consequences, no limits, no discipline, no learning or earning maturity. As the spiritual teenager, rebellious, and not equipped yet to make the right choices, we want to refuse to give up all the 'fun' stuff. We can't see the long term benefits over the short term gains, we want what we want and we want it now.

Then there is the Father who conceived us, longed for the day we were born, and birthed us in His Heart. The one who loves us enough to die for us. The one who loves us too much to let us destroy ourselves with indulgence and entitlement.  Our Father who created us to be wholly perfect in His love, in His family, where we share ourselves in order to better love one another.

It pains our Father to see us not with Him at all times, He mourns the disconnection, but also the toll it takes on our lives to live with the step-father. But. He also knows that it is in our nature to want the best of both worlds, and so He allows this joint custody of us here on earth. He knows we need to discover what it's like to continue living under the step-father's roof, without the severe consequences of actually having to live with him full time yet. And He always offers the safety and stability for our reprieve when the chaos of that freedom gets too much.

It doesn't matter what age we are at, we can stay stuck in spiritual teenage-hood well into our adult years. What we may have learned maturing into adulthood hasn't yet translated to spiritually growing up. In fact, some of the ways we learned to cope with growing up, we now think we need them in order to be self-sustaining adults. But the point is that we'll never be successful at self-sustaining long term, we were created to be sustained by our Father. Yet, if we don't learn this, our coping with self-sustaining often turns from mere coping into an addiction to self.

And He understands, He knows how hard cold turkey is. In a way, earth has also become our rehabilitation home, an opportunity to restore us to the healthy, wholly perfect beings our Father created us to be. He would love to just rescue us, and take us into His eternal home instead, but it is a home that can only admit perfection, and He knows we can't go from where we are at to maintaining an expectation of perfection. Not without His help. So He compromised, He gave us another home, His Temple, where we can fully access Him, without the expectation of perfection.

As we learn what grace looks like here with Him, the desire to run away to gain freedom will lessen, and the desire to dwell here permanently, in true freedom, will grow. Once we understand our double-mindedness and make the choice to abide with our Father, we don't earn perfection, but we accept and receive the gift our Father has had for us all along, His covering of perfection. When we finally make that choice, we want to live with our Father forever, our earthly health may not yet be fully and wholly restored, but our inheritance is! In that moment we are welcomed into His eternal home, His children once and for all.