Excuses

Now, I know I have seriously neglected my writing lately, but I just realized that I have only posted one blog in the last three months. To be fair, I started a new job and spent a good deal of that time writing a couple of devotionals for a book. But then, there is always an excuse, isn’t there?

Whenever I take on a serious commitment, such as a new job, the passions of my life inevitably take a back seat. My family and friends, my writing and music, and most importantly, my relationship with Jesus. Despite all of my “good reasons” to save those things for another day, I know that some sacrifices are inexcusable.

There will always be something to steal my time and attention. There will always be a reason why I cannot devote myself to the people and things that I love. There will always be an excuse for allowing laziness to take hold of my life.

Therein lies the challenge; determining to make those things a priority in my life. To fight for the time and pray for the focus I need, regardless of the challenges that come up to block my way. I can fill my time with just about any project and, with plenty of logic, anything can be made important enough to supersede the essentials.

But where will that leave me in the end?

Dry and empty, wondering where the years have gone, where my life went. I don’t want to waste my life. I don’t want to lose the precious moments I have to do what I want to do. I don’t want to miss the opportunities I get to say what I want to say. What He wants me to do. What He wants me to say.

I have missed going the extra mile for time with my loved ones. I have missed writing. I have missed my music. I have missed my Jesus.

Spring Break has been a breath of fresh air for me. A merciful gasp, really, to take with me before another deep plunge back into the waters of the work world. Not to say that my job is a dreaded foe. I love my job! The challenge for me is the temptation to throw myself too much into my work. Over the break, I’ve had the chance to seek and savor Him more than I have in a long time, to see Him in a deeper way. And it has been…many things. Precious. Sobering. Romantic.

I know I will be slammed with challenges, literally, the moment I go back to work. Will I fall back into the way it was before? I’m sure I will stumble quite a bit, but I’m ready to make the time for the things that are important to me. I’m ready for faithful dedication to my loved ones, disciplined progress to my God-given dreams, and ardent devotion to my Lover and King. I’m ready.

And after all that we've been through,
And after all we left in pieces,
I still believe our lives have just begun.
‘Cause now the past can be outrun,
And I know You are the reason.
I still believe the best is yet to come.

-Best is Yet to Come by Red

Progressively Set-Apart

            I am so excited about the future. My expectations have gone through some periods of serious morphing, especially throughout my college experience, and now I see how selfish all of those expectations were. I wanted my college experience to unfold this way, for my love story with a guy to unfold that way, and my career path to go just so, all the while praising Jesus for doing things my way.  I wanted a mechanical and somewhat predictable life. I wanted to be “just like everybody else.” I wanted to be understood and happy. To prove wrong all those who had ever challenged me and shame those who had ever rejected me. I just knew I had a "right" to all these things. A right to myself.

            I didn’t see then that there is a life possible for me that is so much more than what I ever imagined for myself. Not because it contains the world’s version, or even my own version, of success. Not because I would experience the most romantic love story with a guy that I could ever fathom. Not because I would attain riches, beauty, or recognition. It is because it contains a love beyond anything this world can hold for me. One of forgiveness and renewal, where all my hurts become unimportant in comparison to the affirming acceptance I find and all my vices become completely alterable by the steady hand I have to hold.

            I find I do not need to worry about the future, since I have no control over how it will unfold anyway, because God, my Love, holds my future in His hands, writing it Himself and guiding me with an even better purpose than I could create for myself. How can I, a tiny being limited in my own understanding of existence, ever orchestrate my own course and purpose when He is the One that sees, knows and understands all? He is the One who created me! Of course He is going to know the specific purpose I was created for and enable me to fulfill it.

            I just finished reading Authentic Beauty by Leslie Ludy. Absolutely fantastic. One point that she makes, in paraphrasing a quote by Oswald Chambers, is that by realizing the reality of Christ, our one true Love and Purpose, “we are never bothered again by the fact that we do not understand ourselves, or that other people do not understand us. The only One who truly understands me is the One who made me and redeems me…” I have always been so concerned about finding someone to completely understand me, but I had never thought of it quite that way before…that it shouldn’t bother me that there is not one human on this planet who can understand every aspect of me, even myself. He understands me far better than even I do.

            When I think about it, there are some friends I can go to who can understand certain parts of me but cannot relate with other parts. Then there are some friends who can relate with those parts, but do not understand what my other friends do about me. There are always those gaps. Even between family members. But that’s okay. We were not designed to understand every single aspect of everybody else because then we would find that fulfillment in someone other than God.

            I know that the only person who would ever come close to fully understanding me would be my future husband, who I call Pete. That is, if I am meant for marriage. But you know what? I’m not worried about it, because the purpose that drives my life is beyond the necessity of being married. If I get married, then it will be fantastic because it is the direction in which God has directed my life in order to better fulfill His purposes. If not, then I can be just as satisfied because that means being unmarried is more advantageous in enabling me to fulfill the ultimate purpose of my life.

            I find the more I give my life and my future over to the Lord, I am not so hung up on things going a certain way. By default, not by discouragement, I imagine my future as a single person and I am thrilled by the ideas I entertain of serving the Lord, growing closer with Him in the most intimate ways, being satisfied in Him and His understanding of me alone, and allowing Him to use me as His instrument to show Himself to others. I am excited over Him continually improving me, the possibilities and knowing that, whatever happens, it will be good and I will love it.

            If I do have a Pete, only when he is revealed to me will I have a reason to imagine, with any solidity, my life any other way. And that is fine by me. I would rather be single, with my heart and inner sanctuary for Him kept intact the way He intended, than to settle and rush into a marriage that I would regret because of discontented impatience and insecurity. If that were to be the case, then let me be single all the days of my life. I will not settle and I will not worry about my future. There is too much to be ecstatic about today.

The Plight of Worry

            There is a season for everything in life. Some seasons are experienced more thoroughly or at more frequent intervals than others. I am facing a familiar sort of season in my life right now - one of change, to be very general - but am experiencing it in an entirely new setting.

            I know that it is pointless to dwell on and worry about the future because it does not “add a single hour to [my] life.” (Matthew 6:27) This has been a constant struggle of mine throughout my life, which I have become better about recently; I have accepted my present circumstances for the way they are and I am no longer agonizing over the many unknowns. In fact, I am rather excited about the prospective future by leisurely imagining its possibilities, as opposed to fretting over exactly what in the world will happen.

            In college, I honestly had no clue whatsoever as to what I would do or where I would go after graduation. During the first half of school, I didn’t worry so much, reasoning that I had plenty of time to figure it out and convinced it would “just come to me.” Junior year, as is typical for juniors, I panicked. Yes, I was one of the many who fell prey to the oh-so-common Junior Panic.

            Halfway through the year, I found a passion for a certain fallback plan. Over the next year, I acquired a new passion, which surpassed the first, and my plan changed. By the time I graduated, the plan attached to that second passion, which was to teach English overseas, simmered away as I rediscovered that teaching is not my gift at all.

            So there I was…a recent college graduate, my safety net and solid plans dissolved just as soon as I had managed to get out. No amount of planning or worrying about the future had done me any good. I was back at square one. I have found that you can plan your entire life and arrange your whole world, but that does not set your plans into motion. Anything can come up, rendering such things in life beyond your control.

            This brings me to my current season. After plenty of worrying over the summer, I came to find myself in a place I never could have planned. Astoundingly, the Lord brought me everything I needed at exactly the right time and not a moment sooner. Experiences. Opportunities. Relationships. Finances. Passions. Ideas.

            I am not yet settled and secure in the direction of my life. There are quite a few things that I am still experiencing, things I must learn before I may be solid in the sense of career and living situation. I find myself in a very sizable in-between stage right now, where nothing is sure, only infinitely possible. Nothing is predictable, only insecurely probable. There is no point in predicting anything, as there is usually something greater that comes along, seemingly out of nowhere, altering the entire situation and its previously assumed outcome.

            I am no longer a part of the life I once knew, a life that was all I knew, and I am at a loss at the life I will have, even one year from now. It is a life in which nothing is secure, in which I have nothing to cling to for assurance but my Jesus. I feel the thin wire that my life lives upon right now. Its fragility. Its vulnerability. If He so wills, it could all fall apart and be gone, but He is the One holding it all together. Again, I see how I cannot be the one to hold up my life. I have no control. I have no power.

            This period He has me in, I feel, is engineered specifically for the deepening of my reliance on Him and becoming exactly who He wants me to be. My focus has been narrowed to a handful of things that need a lot of attention, effort, and cherishing. I am planting now for the harvest so that I may be ready in those few, but important, areas when the time comes to move on from my present season.

            As I am focusing on a specific few of important things right now, there are other certain elements of my life that have necessarily been put off to be saved for later. Things I miss to the point of inner struggle and things I thought I was ready to experience that I am really not ready for at all. Sometimes I feel like such a mess, so far from being prepared, that I wonder if I will ever be ready enough to experience some of those things. But that is another thing I am learning…not to worry, but to trust that I will be ready for whatever I am being prepared for, all in perfect timing and not a moment sooner. And it will be beautiful.

The fear left me when I took a breath.

“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within you.” –John 7:38

I didn’t wait long after testing the water to jump right into the shallow entrance of the sea. There was an ocean before me and I was there to plunge into the waves and reduce my life on the beach to a mere memory. It was a little cold, but I was so overjoyed with the fact that I could swim I didn’t even bother to take much notice.

As I made my way deeper, I could more easily dip myself under the surface for a taste of the joy and wonder I found there. When the water became too deep, most of my body remained underneath. But the waves were coming. The introduction to my new life here was ending and the wonder of its beginning was to be faced with challenges.

The waves grew bigger and I practiced my maneuvers, not to escape them, but to go through them. I remembered the early lessons of my swim teacher and his instruction led me on, although I did not follow the later instructions he had given me because I had not yet put them into practice and understood how to use them. I grew weary, but I was confident that if I withstood the testing waves of challenge, I would reach the calmer seas beyond. Then, the simple life would return. I would then reach my ultimate goal.

The waves were more challenging than I would have thought. I was thrown quite a bit and for a long time. My knees were shot into sharp rocks, my elbows received gashes and I’m sure there were a few bruises. I had to kick my way to the surface for air and my lungs burned like fire. Several times, I even found I had been shot back to where I was before in more shallow waters. The tide was wretched.

It was then I realized that I had begun to practice the later instructions of my teacher through all of these waves, the more advanced material. It had made me stronger and I finally made it through the waves before me. I could not have done it without him. Surely, even in the shallow depths I would have failed.

At last, I made my way to the calmer and deeper sea. The massive waves of my past were behind me, but they had left me tired and worn. I held my breath at first so I could float and rest on the surface somewhat. After a time, I had caught my breath and I turned to the open sea to continue on.

It was then that I realized…I must have sprained my ankle in the turmoil. There had been more damage done than I thought. It was so painful to swim. I didn’t like this. Now that I was out where I could swim deeply, I was hurting too much to do so the way I had wanted. Should I go back to give up? To rest and start over? Once I got out of the water, there would be no guarantee that I would want to get back in. No. I wanted to carry on from where I was. I would just have to endure the pain.

My swim was a slow and hobbling venture. Sometimes I would go underneath the surface and rely mostly on my arms to get me by, that is, until I healed. I remained that way for a long time…too long. I made it a habit of dipping down every so often, relying on the support of the water to keep me afloat just below the surface as I travelled, and then I would come up for air and kick hard to keep myself above. I thought I was making great progress. I was going further and further out, but I was still growing weary. I had to stop and rest often and the sun had come out, so that did not help.

I kept on with this cycle and the time crawled by. I couldn’t understand why I was having such a difficult time. I wasn’t growing in this life. I was only getting tired. This wasn’t the life that was promised to me. All I had gained was a life of pain and struggle. The only relief I really ever felt was when I was underneath, completely submerged in the sea. To be surrounded by the depths of the life I chose, not merely travelling through. I didn’t like that my head was left out of the wonderful feeling for so much of the time. Not to mention, I was getting a sunburn too.

Finally, my frustrations caught up with me and I stopped. Where was this life leading me? I didn’t want to give up because I still had hope for discovering what I had been looking for, longing for, seeking to fill myself with. But I was at a loss. I hadn’t found it. I knew I was close but it was somehow eluding me.

As I lied floating on the surface, quiet and still, I heard something beneath me. A sound. An echo. A voice. Was it here? Had it been there all along? It had not occurred to me before. It was clear that I had given up my life on the land. There really was no reasonable way I should survive out here. Why did I ever think I would be able to live out here as if I still lived on the land? As if I were going back? There was no going back. I had come out here to die to myself.

It had never been about how far across the surface I could go. It was about how deep I could go. There had been an entire level of existence below me that I had been missing, because it hadn’t seemed logical. It was crazy. My purpose, all along, was to go deeper into the depths of this sea.

I was hesitant as I thought this out. But what did I have to lose? All I knew was that being underneath is where all my joy came from. I slipped myself beneath the glassy sea, letting it cover me like a blanket. I sank further and further. I closed my eyes.

The fear left me when I took a breath.

My eyes darted open. My body was well and alert. I had died to my old self by taking that breath and found that I was alive…because I didn’t need the air. I felt the full extent of the living water inside me. Believe it or not, I laughed. I smiled and threw back my head in joy. In wonder, I was no longer absorbed with the travelling and the distance. I moved about slowly, twisting down head first to challenge the direction of gravity. Turning upward to see my hair floating above me, following me down.

I was surprised that I did not descend into darkness. The ocean floor was light and I could see the sun glinting of the endless shades off fish and other creatures. I swam closer and discovered the beauty of this creation. All the sights I had been missing. Every detail my eyes captured deepened my knowledge of the sea’s character. It became even more wondrous and mysterious to me than before. I wanted to see more.

I became lost in the wonders of my new life. It has by no means been perfect nor shall it ever be so. I have faced dark crevices and frightening sights. I know there is more to come. But my ankle has healed. Wounds that I received during my early experience in the waves have left some scars that will never go away. I will always be reminded of how I got them. But the memory of pain has been dimmed and I can live with those scars. As long as I am in the place of this marvelous light, I will continue to grow closer to what really matters. The journey has taken me deeper into the heart of the sea.

I can never know all there is under the surface. It's too grand and endless for me to comprehend. I can only explore it in parts, get to know those parts as much as I am able and then I will at least know the character of the sea in general. I will understand a bit better the parts I will not make it to in this life. Others will explore many of those different parts. I may pass some of them by and learn about the places I have not been to before, the things I have not seen. I may go where they have gone too and I may need to remain content with only knowing about their experience. I will stay where I need to stay or continue on to the next place I need to go.

I don’t know where I’m going, but as long as I am submerged, exploring the character and the vastness of this sea, I will only grow within its depths. I don’t know where I will come out, but I know that when I do it will be on the other side, on brighter shores. And I don’t know what all awaits me on that shore, but I know that my journey in this place will be over and a new journey, whole and everlasting, will begin.

Control

I have a problem: I get so paranoid about things falling apart. I know it’s because things were falling apart for so long in my life that I’m just used to it. But shouldn’t I be over it by now? Shouldn’t I just surrender to the fact that things are out of my control?

One of my biggest struggles is to daily give my life to the Lord and rest in the fact that He is in control. It must be a daily thing. The thing about giving your life to Him daily and the whole idea of a living sacrifice is that, when you’re alive, you can crawl off the alter at any time and choose to cease giving up your life. I think a person can die for just about anything, but it’s living for something that is the hardest. It takes denying yourself, giving up what you want, giving up control. Not pitching a fit, but resting and trusting.

I have always been extremely academic. Not perfect, of course, but very involved. Since I have been home, I have come across all my old trophies, certificates, ribbons, student-of-the-month badges, and all the pictures revolving around such events. There are tons of things. I was really more into achievements that I thought. In actuality, I didn’t really think of it much. It all just came very naturally to me, like it was the obvious choice that I would aim to excel in this area.

Now, I’m starting to think that one of the reasons why I have been this way is because my studies were something I could control. Something I knew how to thrive with when everything else was so out of control for all those years. My family was in a constant state of falling apart and I was never sure how I was able to deal with it. Seriously. There were so many negative things I could have reverted to in efforts to deal with things. But now that it’s over, I think I’m starting to realize….that school was a drug for me. And now that source of control is gone.

I have no control anymore and I’m seeing the areas that are overwhelming to me now because of just how much I know I cannot control them. I cannot control the jobs I may or may not get. I cannot control the fact that my best friends are moving overseas for a year or more. I cannot control the fact that I don’t have my own place right now. I cannot control the cemented memories of the past. I cannot control the uncertainties of future relationships. And I cannot control change.

Change is so hard for me. Uncertainty is even worse.

I’m finding now that I’m just really appreciating the fact that God never changes. He is my constant and He promises that He holds my future. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘Plans for good and not for evil. Plans to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11) Lord, please take away my fear of uncertainty and help me to rest in the fact that You are vastly more able and trustworthy to control things than I am.