Don't Get Any Ideas.

There is an unavoidable dilemma at 22, in which every young man to whom I speak is seen through others' eyes as a "prospect."  I do not blame people for this.  I fully realize that matchmaking, even if passive, is the most entertaining thing people can do with women like me.  However, this does create a mental obstacle towards speaking to my brothers in Christ as I ought.

Firmly forgetting that someone will be speculating gently as to any future possibilities, I am at last able to speak normally to Obadiah and draw him out of his shell as I would any well deserving person.  [Don't get excited, my dear matchmakers.  I don't know an Obadiah.]  However, fearing opinions and shying from harmless speculations, I find myself refusing to speak to men at all, should they be remotely young and unattached.  

Such was my unvoiced strategy for many years, and certainly through high school.  In a college environment where everyone was the same age anyway, speaking to men became natural and easy for me.  In college ministry, I tried to make people comfortable.  Men, as well as women, like to feel welcome in new situations.  Unfortunately, when I would return to various multi-generational environments, I found myself reverting to old habits.

I became newly aware of this fault in myself when I entered into conversation with a young man who had been visiting the church for several weeks.  Why had I not introduced myself to him before?  I had noticed him before, in a rather scientifically offhand manner, as if his life had nothing to do with mine.  The problem is, it does have something to do with mine.  He belongs to the same God that I do.  We are inextricably linked by the same Holy Spirit who breathed life into both of us, and by the same Christ who took our sins in equal and extravagant measure so that we might die to sin and live to His righteousness.

Yet here I am, fearing other people's opinions, and therefore doing nothing to welcome, to invite, to encourage.  I believe very strongly in protecting reputations and not giving people reason to gossip, but the extremity to which I take these cautions is frequently overdone.  Shame on myself for inattention based on fear, or worse, pride, for isn't it pride that wants onlookers sure of my indifference?  An indifference, in fact, that is unloving, ungracious, and devoid of real humility.

People will always speculate when there are matches to be made.  I find it rather funny.  Meanwhile, people ought to feel welcome.  We are the Church after all.  

What Does Man Gain by Toil?

Three weeks before I graduated from college, I looked into the future and saw the emptiness of Ecclesiastes stretch before me.  Three months later, the vanity of existence still looms before me on an ever darkening horizon.  I once hoped that by 22, I would have found my purpose in someone else's.  But my plans continue to be solely self-promoting.  One thousand options, and not one appeals to me without coaxing.  I find little wonder that C.S. Lewis warned of thinking too much of the future and too little of the sparkling present.

“The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time--for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.”    ~Screwtape Letters

As I look ahead now, I find it easy to question the purpose of my existence.  Once I foresaw a life of meaning, of living for others.  Now I find that I must act for myself, and the idea is unattractive and useless to me.  When my life stretches before me, and all I can see is work to keep myself alive, to further my weak ambition, to stretch myself academically, I think I would not mind dying young.  Then, at least, I could make a difference.  When you have no goals, no ambitions, no drive to accomplish for the sake of accomplishing, every step in your career seems made to pay your own bills, to move up your own ladders, and to fight for your own survival in a Darwinian society.  

When I was younger, I used to lose myself in fiction so completely that I forgot the beauty of my own reality.  Now I lose myself in reality so completely that I forget the beauty of life.  I'm a good reformed girl.  I know that my purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  But I am also human, and frail, and there comes a point when I wonder how meaningless my existence really is and will be when I am only ever fighting for myself.

When brothers come into the room to hug me goodnight, I catch a glimpse of why I continue to exist.  But what happens when they leave to start their own lives?  To pursue their own dreams?  I won't always be able to do their dishes a hundred times a day, and vacuum their rooms, and sweep their floors, and play their games.  What happens when loneliness finally catches up to me, and I am forced to admit that I am not needed?

The Prophet says that all is vanity.  I know that hopelessness.  I know the lack of meaning in a life that should be full of meaning.  I know what it is like to plan, but to see your plans only with apathy.  "What else would I do?" is my question as I shrug my shoulders, and nothing comes to mind.  At least here at home I can help others, before I leave and help myself.

I pray for a purpose.  I need one.  

"The end of the matter; all has been heard.  Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."    ~Ecclesiastes 12:13

Heart Surrender

People say to dream big, God-sized dreams, but what if you've only ever had one dream?

Sure, I've thought up other dreams and big plans and potential realities, because I am a creative person and have to do something with my life.  But in the end, I've only ever wanted to be a mom.

When I was little, other girls played parties and weddings with their dolls.  No such frivolities for my dolls until their school was done!  I was a homeschooling mom, and I do believe my dolls complained almost as much as my brothers and I did when it came to schoolwork.

Your heart can break for what it does not have, and mine breaks again and again to be what seems most unlikely.  I am comforted that I am not the first, nor the last, to desire this God-gift of mothering, yet to feel the whip of a fallen world in which mother-women never hold their own children.  Should I be sorry to have the heart of Eve, mother of all mankind?  I am, after all, her daughter.  I know that the Lord's heart is with the barren woman, and the desolate one.  I know that this heart for mothering is His own heart.

"Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child; 
Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed; 
For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous than the sons of the married woman," says the LORD.
~Isaiah 54:1

Yet now, as I plan my future after college graduation, my prayer is consistent and urgent:  If this dream is not in Your will, please take it from me!

I pray this often, because I need to focus on my present and too often the ache hurts to much to ignore.  I pray it hard, because I am not above begging for the pain to be removed.  Still, though it is hard to surrender a deep dream, it is even harder to surrender the surrendering.  Only Your will, I whisper into His comfort.  God is near to the brokenhearted, and I ask Him to be near, so if He chooses to let me break the rest of my life for something I will never have, who am I to object?  To always be in His presence, because I am always needing His presence~how do I refuse this?

Still I ask, and still I beg, but always my heart is full of wanting His will for me.  Not just His will for my life, but His will for my heart.  

Prayer for the Imagined

Lately, I have been trying to pray for my future husband.  I have run into only one small problem:  I don't think he exists.  However, I reason that I shouldn't let my own disbelief prevent my genuine prayer for a man who may exist despite my disbelief in him.

Why would it hurt me to pray for a man that I don't believe exists?  Perhaps because it forces me to see what I really believe--or don't believe.  Perhaps because it brings me face to face with ideas that may be insecurities, that may be lies, that may be truth.  I've heard that I should pray for those who hurt you, and perhaps this man who does not exist has hurt me with his nonexistence.  Rather a silly idea.  But I pray anyway.

I pray for grace in this imaginary man's life~for an understanding of love not based on works.  For strength and perseverance in God's work.  For hope and conviction of God's presence in this imaginary life.  For always increasing wisdom beyond his years, and the healing of sin scars.  I pray that he would be down to earth but able to see dreams of God glory.  I pray for this imaginary man to have a passion for the least of these and a bold spirit for justice and truth.

And finally, I pray that God would make me a ready helper for this imaginary man.  That I would have grace for his mortality beyond what I know how to have.  That I would always be an encouragement in his life~a life that will be full of discouragements and trials that we will only overcome out of God's abundant grace for the imaginary us.  I pray that I will learn now the things I will need to know, that I may be a strong support, having hope that perseveres.  I pray that we would be faithful parents of our imaginary children, raising them in an imaginary home that is filled with grace for all of our falterings and failures.

The only thing that seems real in my prayers, is my prayer.  
Grace and God's glory?  These are things that are never imagined.

Valentine's Day

February 14th has always been an indifferent sort of day to me, rather like President's Day.  I still have school, the cafeterias are open during their normal hours, and I don't have the opportunity to talk in an Irish accent and tell people the real story of St. Patrick.  
Since getting to college I have had the Hallmark holiday forced upon my attention, mostly by girls who hate it and by people of both sexes who think it can only be a happy day when they have found someone special with whom to spend it.  So, as I say, it has never meant much of anything one way or another.  I have never had occasion to either like it or dislike it, and I have always been of the opinion that any day that means cheaper chocolates than normal can't be all bad.

But this year it was different.
Expressing my love for people has always been difficult, and few thing have ever been harder for me than saying the common words, "I love you," directly into someone's eyes.  Over time my years of hardness and long fears have been softened, but I recently realized how difficult it still is for me to say those words to God.  At first, I thought getting into the practice would be unnecessary and even over-sappy, but I soon saw that my concern was actually that I wouldn't be able to do it.  I wouldn't be able to look my Creator in the eye and say, "I love You."

I am still shy of Him.  I am often still slow to find my words and squirm when my prayers get personal.  I find myself unable to look up at Him when I speak my secret thoughts and confess my ugly sins and tell Him that I do love Him.  I do love Him.  

Old writing of mine comes back on this day and speaks what I knew already of Christ's love for His church. It speaks of His wedding vow to us, His beloved.  I hear my past self saying, "He loves me unreasonably.  He doesn't love me because it makes sense, because I am a logical choice, because He thinks me good enough.  He just loves.  He finds time for me, and thinks I am worth the inconvenience and impracticality--so much that He doesn't even think of the inconvenience as inconvenience."  My past self is often wiser than my present self.

On this day I finally learn that God wants to spend time with me, even if we just sit in silence together.  He doesn't rush me to reveal my darkness or my love.  He waits for me and with me, patient to listen and patient to pursue. He reassures my fears and brings out the me in me, rather than the someone else.  In His encompassing love I do not need to try to be better or smarter or stronger or daintier or differenter.  "There is no condemnation," my Romans 8 mind reminds me, "your spirit is alive because of righteousness..." 
On this day God shows me how patient He has been to hear my love expressed, and I speak softly into the stillness, still shy, but determined, to tell Him how much He means to me.

This year, February 14th was no longer just a day of the month.  This year, it was Valentine's Day, and I was learning to love the One who died for me.