By Michelle Morrison

The question: You raised six incredible children and all of them are in the church today. What did you do to achieve such a wonderful feat? What does it take to keep our own children in the faith of their parents? What are the ingredients in the menu of education and spirituality that come to mind, and can be of help to others?

The answer? Fruit. “Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:17, NKJV). My husband and I started life together much like many of you did. We fell in love and always planned on having a large family. We were quite young, and kids came quickly. Unlike many young women of my generation, what I wanted most, more than a career, was to have a happy Adventist, united-in-the-faith home. And I was willing to do anything to get it. I guess God took me at my word.

It was the 1980s. Righteousness by faith was being rediscovered, and we were both working hard at “fruitfulness.”  There were lots of dos and don’ts and being new to Adventism myself, I embraced it all. Wayne (my pastor husband) is a fifth-plus generation Adventist, so he had the rules down and was in the middle of every committee and ministry while starting and running our own business and playing hard on the weekends. Oh yeah, and managing a family.

We crashed. I did first. And it was the fruit that got me. I looked at my life, all the stuff I was doing right, what the church and Ellen G. White said to do, and felt I was faithful, doing it right. But the fruits—my closest and most important relationships, my husband and our marriage, our children and their relationships with me—were bad. The kids seemed more afraid of me than trusting. My husband was never home and, I thought, liked it that way. I was confused, felt betrayed by my church and God. And that’s when I broke. Everything broke. Rather than trade God in, I challenged Him to show me a better way.

That’s when I found the first of my life verses, Psalm 51:6: “Thou desirest truth in my inmost being, therefore give me wisdom in my secret heart.” My church had one definition of “truth.” God gave me another definition, much broader and grayer, that continues to shape everything I am, everything I do and who we are as a couple and family.

I began praying for truth, clarity, guidance, and peace, in my inmost being. God gave me that truth and it hurt, incredibly. But somewhere during the pain of seeing and taking responsibility and owning my stuff, I found a God who really does want to make it as easy as He can.

Wayne jumped on the search for truth bandwagon and we hurt some more. Singly and together, we waded through issues. The fruits, maybe not plentiful, were there, between us first, then spilling over onto the kids.

Structured family worship wasn’t consistent but as parents, we were diligent in providing an example of personal devotional time. Bible storytime, while not a production, was a nightly ritual. Our kids attended all types of school: church, public and home schools. We didn’t mandate much but church attendance was non-negotiable. So too was work; from the time they were little with charts, or as soon as they could help pay their school bills, the kids earned for themselves and for their academy bills, most of which they paid.

The biggest guiding principle of our home was allowing choice. As appropriate to age and responsibility level, we let out the reigns and encouraged the kids to own the consequences of their actions. We didn’t rescue or control the outcomes. We avoided judgment, and shaming or blaming speech; or at least we tried to! These were hard choices, ones that didn’t make sense, yet God was calling us to be transparent and struggle through, as a couple and family. But we learned the hard way that to be in God’s perfect will for us is more important than what we want, and the blessings that follow obedience are worth it.

I was a stay-at-home mom for all of them until they went to school (20 years!)—and while that in itself lends security to their formative years, the most important thing to me was a husband and father who loves God with all his heart, loves us like he loves God, and protects, plays, laughs and leads us with wisdom and strength.

Now the fruit, 37 years later, seems to be showing up most brightly in the collective lives of our children. Recently, on a family message thread, my daughter-in-law stated, “. . . and how many of us are on the church payroll?” Our oldest has taught in four academies since graduation, our second is a dean in the second academy of her career, our third and her husband were a volunteer pastoral couple for a time, our fourth is a recruiter and does music ministry for one of our colleges, the fifth is in the residency program at Adventist Health System, the sixth is active in his college’s campus ministries, using his talents of art and music for Jesus. Finally there’s us—a business-turned-pastoral couple with me recently exchanging my nursing career for a music teaching career at one of our day academies.

What can I say? We did nothing but follow Jesus’ lead out of darkness into light—bright light. Truth and only truth is what sets us free. “I am the way, the truth and the life, . . . and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed!” (John 14:6; 8: 32, 36). Jesus isn’t a formula, or a bunch of dos and don’ts or black-and-white rules. He is a Person, and the way to know Him is perhaps best expressed in John 10.

It says, “My sheep know My voice and follow Me, they will not follow another.” Once Wayne and I learned His voice, how to discern it, listen for it, see it, even to what some would call mystical (He is Spirit, after all!), we taught our kids how to know His voice too. When they can hear for themselves, we are no longer between or in the way. And what a great place to be when you have a relationship with anyone—on the side, cheering them on, encouraging the still, small voice and letting God be God in their lives, not us!

For you and your family it will undoubtedly look different, as our personalities, situations and lives are different—except as we let God’s Spirit reveal the truth about us to us, and learn to hear and follow His leading voice wherever He goes (even when it doesn’t make sense).

And the making of fruit? Only God can do that!

–Michelle Morrison is a pastor’s wife in Brighton, Colorado. Email her at: [email protected]