#16 - But who am I?
Over the past couple of weeks, Ramon and I have tried to take you through all the happenings in the past five years of our lives. We received all kinds of sweet responses and loved sharing all of this with you. I would love to continue writing, it gives me energy and I really like sharing my thoughts with you. But sometimes something is gnawing at me while I'm writing.
Who am I?
Who am I to tell you about how to listen to God's voice? Who am I to share my vision on church, family and faith? What useful information can I share about the bigger subjects in life, being a 26 year old with 5 years of marriage-experience and kids that aren't older than 4 years old?
But the problem runs deeper than a little gnawing during writing blogs. I dream big, always have. The biggest and wildest ideas get in my head and are made into an elaborate plan and a list of thing that I need to make it happen: A trip around the world, a career in music, at least 3 different college-educations I find very interesting, designing and building my own house, setting up a reintegration-program for juvenile delinquents, writing a book, starting and running a youth center and plenty more. The list usually grows a little longer, but making it shorter turns out to be a whole lot harder. Because, who am I?
I don't really consider myself to be a very insecure person anymore, but this question keeps taunting me. This also happened to an idea that I had for quite some time.
See, I believe God has put aside a gigantic role for families to make 'thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven' a reality. Because if you think about the fact that the Kingdom is in us, that automatically makes a family nothing less than a little piece of Kingdom on earth. If that piece of Kingdom is healthy and expands through training and discipeling others, it'll go super fast! But the majority of the kingdom-parts are getting influenced by the western, individualistic and (if we're being honest) parent-emptying idea of being a family.
After long consideration I decided I had to act on the idea I had: helping families become healthy and relaxed and through that build Gods Kingdom on earth. That's how Stress Less Family coaching was born. A possibility to be coached via the phone, a direct line that wasn't depending on appointments (that have to be made weeks in advance), like a Dutch consulting bureau 2.0, without the parenting-shaming, without the long waiting and with the biblical background and equality between the parent and the coach. I made a website and talked with a lot of people. People who had a lot of experience with families, people that I already was helping in this kind of way. Everyone was excited, me too. And still, it took me quite some time before I was brave enough to launch the website. Because: Who am I to do this?
But while I'm writing this blog (Tuesday night) I was walking back from the kitchen to the living room and I saw something that Ramon and I have been reciting with our kids for months. Suddenly I didn't see it as 'important for the identity-development of the kids', but it was like God highlighted it for me.
I am the beloved child of God. It's who I am.
No one can take it from me.
I am not a certified parenting-coach, I'm not a woman that has a whole life behind her and has successfully raised 4 kids. I'm also not the perfect parent that never looses her cool or patience and that has kids that never fight, scream or argue.
But ... I am someone with a big passion, of which I believe God has put it in me. I am a graduated social worker, with 10 years of experience in working with kids, teens, and youth. I am a person that almost daily does research and is reading the bible from cover to cover to get as many lessons on parenting as I can get. I am the mother of three kids that (in my opinion) seem to be turning out pretty nice, while really enjoying myself. I am someone who loves helping people and sharing information that I have found. And, probably the most important one: I am someone that wants to follow God and needs no one's permission but His.
That is who I am.