Sucked Dry!

If you, like me, are ever tempted to think that because you're exhausted by the end of each day after caring for the basic needs of your family that you must be doing something wrong...

or if you feel like all the feeding, clothing, teaching, training, moderating, and caring for your children physically, mentally, and spiritually day in and day out, is KILLING you...

and you feel like you're at your wit's end, and your body's end,
or you just wish this day would end...

Cheer up! That shows you must be doing something right!

Or so says Dr. Stephen Paulson (Professor of Systematic Theology for Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.), at a recent lecture on Genesis at a family camp for Mt. Carmel Ministries -
(This is taken from the audio track. )

“What God is doing in [your vocations in life] is not “making you happy”.

[Luther] understands that most of us think of our vocations as the form of our happiness, so that vocations in life are there to provide us a goal which, when reached, will actually produce happiness in us.  I can’t tell you how much misery this has created for people!

We’re actually attacking at the key point what is generally assumed to be the case in life, that you are placed in this world and you seek out your niche or vocation in this world in order to become happy! The greatest carnage this has caused is in marriage....

[People think] that marriage as an institution is an engine that is supposed to produce happiness in you as an individual and what happens very quickly to people is that they turn around and say, 'Well this engine isn't working very well here! My happiness is not as high as it was before!' 

[W]e have to come back to what these vocations are actually for
and how they are actually being used...

They are being used to provide an exercise of faith for you.

They are there to actually put you to death.

Your vocations are there for you to die, 

and to die as effectively as possible.

In your family God is actually making a way to create more life and sustain it. That's what your family is there for.  And what it's doing for you as an individual is it's putting you to death.

Vocation is not a "search for happiness," 

rather, it is like the very large sow at the State Fair 

with many teats all being suckled at once, 

with this goal at the end - 

your being sucked dry by the end of the day.

And at the end of the day you will find your joy and your comfort not in that this has made you happy, but that you trust that this is God's good will and that His promise remains."

Now I don't know about you, but that's one of the most real and comforting things I've heard in a long time.