A Life Unexpected (Part 3)

“Comparison is the death of joy.”

-Mark Twain

            Our propensity for comparing our own circumstances with those of others starts at an early age.  Little Johnny has a toy truck in his hand, and little Bobby does not.  Cue the waterworks.  Little Sally receives five goldfish, and little Suzie receives six.  Brace yourself for the deluge of outraged accusations of unfairness.  As we grow older, we begin to manage our responses a little better (or at least disguise them), but we are still inclined to draw all sorts of comparisons.  A few nights ago, my husband looked at my bowl of ice cream and expressed his indignation against the fact that I had more fudge ribbons than he had. 

More seriously, I have had to guard myself against looking at the lives of others when I am frustrated with my own unmet expectations.  When I succumb to this temptation, I find myself becoming more unhappy, cynical, discouraged, selfish, and ungrateful.  The child who is given five goldfish is content and thankful for the snack (five is certainly more than zero!) until he sees that his friend received six.  Then, all of a sudden, he forgets about what he has and can only think about the one that he does not have.  We know that this heart attitude is immature and lacking in understanding, but that knowledge doesn’t always stop us from giving in to it as adults.  God has provided jobs, a rental house where we can have all three of our dogs, several ministry opportunities, friends who can relate to us on many different levels, close proximity to family, and so much more since He moved us, but it is still far too easy to let all of that fade into the background of the missing pieces of vocational ministry and parenthood.  When I see others who do have those pieces in their puzzle, I have to fight my heart from reverting back to its childish and sinful ways.      

Not only does my heart suffer when my attention is overly fixated on the lives of those around me, but my relationship with God suffers.  A horizontal focus on my circumstances and on the lives of others leads me to doubt the goodness, impartiality, love, and justice of God.  The reason for this is that such a short-sighted mindset is backwards.  It’s much like trying to look through a solid piece of paper to try and see the characteristics of a magnifying glass.  Not only is this absurd and pointless, but it would lead us to believe false information (for example, we might think that the magnifying glass is completely opaque instead of transparent).  We do the same thing with our Creator.  We evaluate His character through the lens of the tangible circumstances of our lives instead of clinging to His character to help us see our circumstances clearly and respond to them correctly.

 

This inverted perspective doesn’t just affect our relationship with God, but it also taints our relationships with other people by prompting us to raise walls of insecurity and envy that distance us from everyone else.  How can we expect ourselves to be vulnerable with other people if we don’t really believe we are secure in God’s love?  How can we help but envy other people if we don’t really believe that God is impartial?  Our deep-seated beliefs about God (not the ones to which we merely give lip-service, but the ones that we are deeply and inwardly convinced are true) directly impact the way we interact in all of our relationships.

So, what is the solution?  We have to shift our focus back to where it belongs: on the true character of our God, made evident in His Son, Jesus Christ.  Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.”  When we know Him, we know God, and we can be confident to follow Him no matter where He takes us.  This is not because He won’t allow anything bad to happen to us in this life, but because He gave us His life when we did not deserve it and He has promised to cause “all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).  He is trustworthy, and He deserves our complete allegiance and obedience.  For Peter, following Jesus meant that he was going to be martyred.  When Jesus told him this, he did exactly what we have been talking about.  He looked at John, and said “Lord, and what about this man?” (Jn. 21:21).  His motive for asking this question isn’t specified, but Jesus’s response is crystal clear: “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?  You follow me!” (Jn. 21:22). In essence, Jesus told Peter that His will for John was none of Peter’s business.  Peter needed to keep his gaze directly on Jesus and follow Him, and that is what we need to do too.

This instruction is hard to accept in a culture that takes equality to an extreme.  We are told that it isn’t fair for some people to have more money than others (even if they earned it legitimately), so we must forcibly take it from those who have and give it to those who have not.  If we give a gift to one friend, then we have to give gifts of the same value to all of our other friends in order to show that we love them all the same.  All children must at least receive participation awards because we don’t want any feelings to get hurt.  We grow up in this environment, and then we expect God to behave the same way.  If He gives a certain earthly blessing to one family but not to another, then He must love the first family more or be more pleased with them.  If He allows one family to experience the horrors of cancer but not another, then He must not really be just.  If He asks one of His followers to be a martyr but not the other, then He must be cruel and unloving.  We become angry with Him because we think that if we follow a list of rules and do everything just the right way then we shouldn’t have to experience hardship or miss out on any earthly happiness. 

In reality, the only thing any of us deserves is death: complete separation from God (who is Love and Truth) forevermore in a place of eternal punishment.  In that respect, we are truly and utterly equal.  However, in His grace and mercy, Jesus gives His life just as equally and utterly to all who trust in Him.  The Creator bled and died to take the wrath that rightfully belonged to the creation.  Each breath we take is a gift that we don’t deserve: a gift of grace.  Each spiritual and earthly blessing is a gift of grace.  Whether we like it or not, even trials and hardships are gifts of grace because God takes those difficulties and uses them for good.  He never allows us to go through more than we can bear with His strength, and He never leaves us.  We have no right to expect any favor from Him, He has every right to command us to follow Him, and He has every right to lead each of His children how He chooses apart from our input (though even in this, He graciously invites us to come to Him in prayer).  When we compare our lives to the lives of others, we not only make a mess of our hearts and our relationships, but we show disregard for God’s great grace and all that He has done for us.  Following our Savior with undivided attention is truly the only appropriate response to the manifold grace we have been shown as well as the only way to a heart that is free to be thankful and content, to love others, and to love God.                            

A Life Unexpected (Part 2)

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

-Proverbs 13:12

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            Growing up, I always wanted to be primarily a stay-at-home wife and mom.  As I was strongly encouraged by the public school system to look at career paths, the only possibilities that really interested me were being an author or doing something that involved ministry, music, kids, or some combination thereof [Bible college later helped to fine-tune and cement both ministry (in the areas of music, children, and/or youth) and writing as secondary calls in my life].  I thought all of these aspirations, especially marriage and parenthood, would be achieved by the time I was twenty.  I would get married at the age of eighteen and have my first child when I was twenty.  After all, you have to start early if you want to have three to five kids before the age of thirty-five with a little bit of space in between each one!  If not by twenty, then surely I would have it all settled by twenty-two.  Maybe the writing part and the level of ministry involvement could wait until the kids were a little older.

When I had my heart completely shattered at eighteen and then found myself without a boyfriend (much less an engagement or wedding ring) on my twentieth birthday, I started to realize that my plan was definitely not going to pan out.  I ended up getting married at the age of twenty-two (which I now realize is still young, but it was later than what I had wanted), I’ve written only very sporadically for my blog, I’ve already shared where we are with the ministry side of things, and now I find myself still childless at the age of twenty-six (twenty-seven in just a few months).  I’ve wrestled with whether or not to share this very personal part of our story.  My intention in sharing it is not to try to solicit pity but to encourage those who are experiencing the same issue.  If there is anything that has become perfectly clear to me in twenty-three months of deferred hopes, early-morning temperatures, Google searches, negative pregnancy tests, and tortuous two-week-waits which have consistently ended with exceedingly unwelcome “shark weeks” (as my husband has so affectionately dubbed them), it is the fact that we are not the only ones who are going through this.

           

            Before infertility (the scary word that is assigned to anyone who has been 
trying to get pregnant without success for more than a year), I assumed that pregnancy would come easily.  After all, people have unplanned pregnancies all the time.  How difficult could it be?  Now, the more we have opened up about our story, the more we have discovered that it is fairly common to have a hard time getting pregnant.  Really, I am amazed at the sheer number of people who have struggled in the past or who are currently struggling to get pregnant with their first child or even with their second or third.  Beyond just the people we have met personally, there is an entire online community of people with their own language of abbreviations to describe all the many facets of “ttc” (trying to conceive).  To extend the reach even further, infertility isn’t a new problem.  There are women in all generations who have ached in their hearts for a child only to be disappointed month after month after month.  Consider how many women in the Bible were barren for a time: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth, just to name some of the well-known ones.

            Hannah’s story (1 Samuel 1-2) has particularly struck a chord with me.  The Bible gives such a vivid account of her anguish over her plight.  Unlike Sarah and Elizabeth, Hannah had not yet reached an age where she had given up any hope of ever being able to bear a child.  Yet, year after year she still had to face the constant disappointment, the social stigmas that were attached to barren women in her time and culture, and the harassment from her husband’s merciless second wife.  At times, it all became too much to bear, and she was overtaken with tears and bitterness of heart to the point where she refused to eat and could barely speak.  Though her husband loved her dearly, he did not fully understand her agony.  Fortunately, Hannah knew someone who did understand her: the only One who had the power to open her womb.  She fervently poured out her heart to Him and made a vow to give the child back to Him if He gave her one.  Her prayer was so passionate that she appeared to the high priest to be drunk.  After accusing and rebuking her, he listened to her explanation and then encouraged her by saying, "Go in peace; and may the God of Israel grant your petition that you have asked of Him" (1 Sam. 1:17).  Hannah left the temple feeling comforted enough that she could eat again.  The Bible does not tell us precisely how long Hannah had to wait, but God did allow her to become pregnant.  She kept her vow and gave her son over to be raised in the temple after he was weaned, but God didn’t stop there.  In His grace, He gave her three more sons and two daughters.

            Thankfully, I don’t have a rival wife or major social stigmas to worry about.  However, I can relate to the roller coaster of being okay on some days and of being completely overtaken with heartache, disappointment, longing, bitterness, and hopelessness on other days.  I am all too familiar with the stabbing, suffocating pain that flares up when well-meaning people ask when we are going to have children, make comments about how we have plenty of time, or advise us that it will probably happen when we stop thinking about it.  I know what it is like to see pregnancy announcements, to see other mothers with their children, and to see countless baby pictures as I scroll through my Facebook feed all while being torn apart between conflicting emotions of genuine happiness for the other mothers, jealousy, guilt for feeling jealous, and deep sorrow.  It’s hard to see stark contrasts like the one in 1 Samuel 1:2, which says, “Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none,” and to refrain from asking, “Why?”

            We aren’t told specifically whether or not Hannah asked that question.  We do know that she took her heartache to her Creator.  Instead of becoming angry with Him or blaming Him, she worshiped Him, opened herself up to Him completely, and allowed Him to comfort her.  While I don’t believe that following her example guarantees us the answer that we want, I do believe that it is the secret to finding sustaining grace and peace.  It is also the path to healing from the heartsickness described in Proverbs 13:12.  Whether or not He ever allows me to become a mother, I know that He cares, He listens, He understands, and He is good.    

A Life Unexpected (Part 1)

“Where You go, I’ll go.  Where You stay, I’ll stay.”

-“I Will Follow” by Chris Tomlin, Jason Ingram, & Reuben Morgan

The caterpillar sat on a small branch with the front third of his fuzzy body stretched up to the sky. 

“I was born to fly!” he exclaimed, “I just know it!”

He was tired of spending his entire days eating and crawling, and he was certain that he was made for something more.  But try as he may, he could not lift his little non-aerodynamic body off of the branch.

Okay, so I may have read The Very Hungry Caterpillar entirely too many times in the past couple of weeks to the little boy I babysit, but this scenario provides a pretty good picture of how my husband and I have felt this past year.  Before I dive into an explanation, I need to give you a little bit of background.  Last December, God very suddenly pulled us out of full-time ministry.  We absolutely know that it needed to happen, but the necessity of the removal doesn’t change the fact that we were ripped away from a life that we absolutely loved.  For a year and a half, we were passionate about the work we were doing, and we felt like we were fulfilling God’s purpose and call for our lives by using the talents and abilities He had given us to serve Him.  Out of the blue, it all came crashing down around us, and we found ourselves carried away in a whirlwind back to the area where we attended Bible college.  Since then, our heart has always been (and still is) to return to full-time ministry eventually.  However, God has not yet given us the privilege of doing that.

In the meantime, we have been focusing on healing, growing, and learning in the midst of the daily grind of a life we didn’t choose or want.  In the beginning, I desperately needed the break from full-time ministry, so even though I was grieving heavily, it was fairly easy for me to welcome this next chapter of our story.  However, as the months have passed and I have experienced more and more healing, I have found myself battling the discontent that wants to slowly creep into my heart.  I ache with the memories of spending each day taking care of my husband and the house and working alongside him to reach into the lives of those around us in various ways.  I especially miss the Sunday nights of laughing, playing, and discussing Biblical truth with the youth and watching my husband teach them.  Without a doubt, ministry had its own set of challenges, but there’s no other way we would rather spend our lives.  Yet, that desire seems so out of reach at times.  God has been gracious to allow us to help with leading worship at our new church, and He has given us a few short windows to help with youth events every once in a while.  While we are truly grateful for the opportunities we’ve been given, we still wish that we could devote more time to ministry.  My husband and I have both struggled off and on and to different degrees with feeling like that caterpillar this year: frustrated and stuck to the tree branch when we really want to fly. 

As I was wrestling with all of this again recently, God directed my thoughts to the life of His Son.  For each struggle that entered my mind, He reminded me of a relatable situation in Jesus’s life, thereby showing that He understands exactly what I am going through:

1)  In some ways, our current situation feels like a huge step backward from where we were.  We know that’s not true, but it’s hard to get our hearts on board with what we know.  Jesus is fully God, but He humbled Himself and came to earth as a human in the absolute lowest and most helpless of ways.  What a seemingly backwards transformation!  Logic says that this must have been a derailing of the fulfillment of His true calling and purpose.  Yet, He was right where God wanted Him to be and where we needed Him to be.  This humbling transformation was not a deviation from the course or a backslide.  It was the very fulfillment of His purpose for that time.

2) We work hard because God tells us to be faithful, but sometimes it feels like we are wasting precious time investing ourselves into our secular jobs.  This is not to say that our work is at all meaningless or unimportant, but it isn’t what we  really want to do, what we believe we were really designed to do, or what we believe we are called to do in the long run.  Jesus worked as a carpenter until He was thirty. 

3) I struggle with worrying about what other people think about our situation, though I know that God is the only One I should worry about pleasing.  People thought all sorts of things about Jesus.  Some thought He was from Satan.  Others thought he was a crazy person, a liar, a pretender, and a blasphemer.  Still others thought He was just a good man or a good teacher.  The truth is all that really matters, and God sees the truth.

4) We have been tempted to rush ahead of God into ministry without really seeking His will.  Jesus was also presented with the opportunity to rush ahead of the plan when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness with all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 

Jesus understands what we are going through, which brings me comfort.  He shows me that I am equating ministry too much with serving God.  Ministry is certainly one expression of service, but service to God is ultimately obeying Him.  Obedience may look very different from what we expect.  The caterpillar is indeed made to fly in due time, but it is also made to eat and crawl in order to develop.  God is not only concerned about what we do, but who we are.  He sees our complete transformation and all of the works that He prepared in advance for us to do throughout that transformation.  Sometimes our job is to go.  Sometimes our job is to stay.  Either way, our bigger job is to trust Him, to obey Him, and to be faithful to what He has called us to do today.