The Unsuspecting Psychologist

How many times have I typed it here over the years?  That what matters most to the Lord is drawing people to Himself--saving souls and more souls?

2 Peter 3:8-9 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

My anxiety-ridden children--whose anxieties are exhausting and fill me with anxiety, and vice versa--see a psychologist every Monday. We all like him, and in fact Mary had her first full session this last Monday and said afterwards, "Mommy, I really love that man." Before she left, she told him, "I'll miss you." 

He'd given her a science lesson about thunder and lightning and showed her many pictures of beautiful displays of God's glory in the skies, also explaining that lightning hits the highest objects around, if anything at all--rarely your house.

He grew up in tornado alley, he told her, and never saw a single tornado. In fact, when his home area in Ohio has a tornado warning, his family goes into the basement and he sits in the garage with the garage door open and tries to find a tornado in the sky--he so wants to see one--but still, he never has!

He asked her what her worst fear was. "A tornado running down the house and killing everybody", she answered.

"If this happened, which is very, very unlikely, where would you go?", he inquired.

"I would go to Heaven and be with Jesus forever." she answered.

"Yes. And your dolls and toys would be strewn all over the street, and children would come and be very happy to play with them, so is a tornado really all that bad?" he countered.

He's an orthodox Jewish psychologist (who also has OCD and suffered with it as a child) who loves God and intersperses things about God into his counseling sessions.

But he doesn't know Jesus. He upholds what my children say about Jesus--and they all have something to say about Him--but he doesn't personally know Jesus the Messiah.

It isn't only one of my children going to this man who loves God but not the Messiah. It's three of them. How rare is that? Three siblings needing therapy for anxiety? So this man has two hours of exposure to Christian children speaking from their heart about Jesus as the Spirit leads, every Monday.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

There was a purpose to the worst summer of my life? A purpose to me feeling like we were a failure as a family because who has this many children suffering from anxiety? I didn't tell you about all the embarrassment, shame, self-doubt, panic and failing faith that characterized my summer--or did I, sort of?

I'm sure I have a lot to learn--that we as a family have a lot to learn. Like how to abide.

But there is another purpose too, I strongly feel, having to do with an unsuspecting psychologist who doesn't know yet that God loves him so much, he's going to plant the truth of the gospel into the case file of the 7-year-old who's afraid of thunder, lightning, tornadoes and loud booms that just might be bombs. With a little help from her brothers.

When she said, "I really love that man," it could just as easily have been the Lord talking.

Jesus loves us! He really does, and when things are hard and down right messy, and we're ashamed and scared and we don't understand how it could get this bad, we can't lose hope. We don't know the outcome, but we do know the purpose. We do know what the Lord cares about.

We just have to care about souls too, and we'll be okay. We have to remember what he has planned for those who love Him.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

1 Corinthians 2:9

However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

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