Personal Testimonies
Another Wayfarer on the Homeward Journey
By Heidi T. Klessig
Nov 10, 2007 - 5:12:49 PM

It was 6:30AM, the time I always left home for the clinic. As always, my five-year-old son had awakened himself and was at the door waiting for me, pajama-clad and blanket in hand. “Mommy, do you have to go to work today? Can I have one more big hug? Will you wave good-bye to me?” And, tears in my eyes, I faithfully waved to him each morning as I pulled out of the driveway.

"If this is normal, why does it feel so wrong?" I wondered to myself. I had grown up going to the babysitter’s or to school while my mom worked; nearly everyone we knew did the same. When I arrived at the clinic, the nurses I worked with commiserated with me, then brought me my coffee and handed me my patient list, and off we would start on our day. After a full day of doctoring, I was exhausted, but happy to come home and hear about the day my husband had spent home schooling our two children. Then (if I had planned my coffee intake just right), I usually had enough energy to get dinner ready, clean things up, give the kids their baths and tuck them in before I collapsed!

Though neither of us grew up in strong Christian homes, my husband and I both came from good hard-working middle class stock. We met just before I started college, and we both met the Lord while at the university. We attended a conservative evangelical church throughout my pre-med and medical school years. During that time, I received nothing but encouragement to become a doctor from both church and family. One of the pastors at the church we attended was married to a doctor, and my best friend in medical school was a pastor’s wife. I certainly believed in God’s word as truth, and wholly subscribed to the admonition that a wife should be submissive to her husband. In fact, I refused to moonlight during residency, since my husband felt that "after work, a woman’s place is in the home!" I would have been shocked and insulted to be called a feminist, though the life I was living was certainly drawn from the feminists' playbook.

After residency, I entered practice in a small city in the Midwest. After a few years of getting established, my husband and I "decided" it was time to start a family. Though we were unable to conceive, God, through His most amazing providence, gave us first a daughter, and then a son through adoption. My husband was committed to raising them for the Lord, spending his days in caring for them, and later, in home schooling them. He knew how much I missed being with our children during the day…in fact, I think he "engineered" some of their significant firsts (first steps, first words) during the hours I was at home so that I could be present!

Meanwhile, I was, in the eyes of the world, very successful. I was partner in a great clinic, doing great work, making a great income. We had a big house on a lake, boats, cars, even the ability to give generously to Christian causes. The only problem was, we just weren’t happy! As my practice grew, my traveling to area clinics increased until I was driving to a different town every day, some more than an hour away. Our daughter began to show behavior problems at church and at home school group. Our son couldn’t fall asleep at night unless he had me in clutched in his grasp. I used to joke with my husband at night that it was too bad he was always the last in my daily line of people who needed me, since by that time I had nothing left for him!

About this time, I felt a real tug of the Spirit on my heart to quit my practice and come home to be a real wife to my husband and mother to my children. Though I did not know it, the Lord was working behind the scenes to make this possible, even working on my husband’s heart in this same direction. I prayed for months about this before I got up the nerve to ask my husband’s opinion; I was so worried that he might say no! Glory to God, when I broached the subject, he said, "Well, of course you can quit, honey, we’d love to have you at home!"

Things then began to happen, fast and furious. We knew that we had to downsize our lifestyle, and began to look for a smaller home. As we were praying over a county map, the Lord showed us a highway we had never noticed before. Sure enough, when we drove over to check it out, there on the corner was a "House for Sale by Owner" sign! By the end of the summer, not only had we sold the big "doctor house," but we had purchased that perfect little home in the country. The big SUV was exchanged for a smaller car. I began to scale down my practice by dropping to part-time until another physician could be hired. About this time I purchased a boxful of CDs from Vision Forum in my desperate quest to stay awake during my hours of driving around the state from clinic to clinic. (This was after my failed attempt to learn Portuguese by audio tape; you can see how desperate I was!) Listening to these CDs, I learned that, according to Titus 2, I was not the godly wife that I thought I was. In fact, Mr. Doug Phillips described the wife that was not a keeper at home as "one who causes the name of the Lord to be blasphemed" (Titus 2:5)! My husband got no better treatment, earning honorable mention as "worse than an infidel" as one who did not provide for his family (I Timothy 5:8).

Well, you can believe we got the commentaries out on these references. The Geneva Bible describes home-keeping wives as "no gadders up and down." Hmmm, I thought, do you suppose traveling to a different clinic every day of the week could be construed as "gadding up and down?" My husband summed up our research this way, "Well, we could argue with Mr. Phillips…but do we really want to?" No, we did not! In fact, we were edified and encouraged by all the Vision Forum messages. I was especially encouraged by "Jennie B. and the Pilot" by Mrs. Jennie Chancey, in which she described her journey to feminism and back again, as it gave me hope that the Lord could deliver me as well!

Then, several months before I was due to leave practice entirely, my husband was diagnosed with an inoperable brainstem tumor. If we had had any doubts about our proposed course of action, this diagnosis dispelled them all. God became real to us as never before as He saw us through all our fears and provided for all our needs through His Spirit, His Word, and His body of believers. In His mercy, my husband now continues to be symptom-free one year after diagnosis, and each day is a blessing renewed in our lives. Indeed, there is now a preciousness, an earnestness about our lives and our dealings with one another that we did not possess before. God has used this diagnosis to clarify our vision and to keep our trust focused on Him, even in the small areas of daily interaction that make up so much of family life. 

I am glad to be able to report, that even after just nine months of being at home, God has been able to show us some “first fruits” of His eventual harvest. Instead of everything revolving around my work schedule, my husband has been able to take on the leadership role in choosing our family’s direction. Our daughter now has the loving relationship that she longed for with both her mother and her father. I can now tuck in my son at night and have him smile, roll over, and with a "Good night, Mom," drop off to sleep. As for myself, I have a deep sense of deliverance and rest in the power and keeping of my gracious heavenly Father. Deuteronomy 11:10-12 says, "For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year." Even though we have only just entered into this new land, we have already seen the gracious hand of our heavenly Father shepherding our way. We are so grateful to Him for giving us this time together as a family, and for allowing me the privilege of serving my husband and children as a keeper at home.