Monthly Archives: September 2012

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09/28/2012

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Fairytale Fallacies

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The Alleged Singleness Expert

Once you’ve written a book on singleness, people tend to assume that anything involving singleness, marriage, or dating must interest you. If I had a dollar for every time someone came up to me to point out yet another book, blog post, seminar, etc. about relationship statuses, I might actually be making decent money off this accidental venture of mine. And I might be less inclined to roll my eyes every time someone approached me with yet another you-name-it.

Because, seriously, it happens all the time and, honestly, I’m not all that interested in talking about romance and relationships.

So when a friend of mine posted a link on my wall saying she thought I would like it, I had one of those “ugh” moments. Except the title of this blog really intrigued me.

“I don’t wait anymore,” it said. So I clicked the link and read what may honestly be the best message on singleness I ever read.

Seriously.

Go read it and see what you think.

“’True Love Waits.’ Waits. What’s it ‘waiting’ for, anyway?”

Apparently I’m not the only person in the world who discovered that waiting is not always a good thing. Someone aside from me realized that the pat answers we give single people do more harm than good. And someone other than me decided that she wasn’t okay with it anymore.

“Whether it was the fault of the leaders, the fault of us girls, or both, a tragedy happened back then. A lot of girls were sold on a deal and not on a Savior.”

Somewhere along the line, we started to get this idea that singleness is an if/then agreement with God.

“If you seek Me first, then I’ll bring the right guy into your life.”

Well okay, God, but is that sort of like how my dad promised we’d get a horse after my brother was potty-trained? Because he’d been wearing big boy pants for seven years when we finally got one, and I don’t know that I can wait seven years for a guy. I’m sort of satisfied now, so could You hurry up a little?

“What if we as girls had learned early on that having Him was everything, not a means to the life we think He would want us to have?”

I completely and totally, wholeheartedly agree with Grace on this one. Somehow we’ve taken something as beautiful as purity and waiting and distorted it until it was all about a guy. But God didn’t give us a season of singleness so we could spend it searching for Mr. Right; He gave us that time to fall in love with Him.

We’ve lost sight of that. We’ve let our focus shift. And we’re insecure and unsatisfied because of it.

“I’ve planned major life decisions around possibilities. I lived like I was waiting for something.”

But you know what? There’s something bigger out there. Something better. God desires so much for you in this season of your life and He is simply waiting for you to reach out and take hold of the life He intended for you.

“I just didn’t want to wait anymore – didn’t want to live like I was waiting on anyone to get here.”

So maybe instead of “True Love Waits,” we should be saying it this way:

It can wait. It can wait until we’ve figured out what’s truly important in life. It can wait until we realize that what we’ve really been missing has been right there all along. After all…

“I already have Him … and He is everything.”

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09/24/2012

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Getting Honest

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You Have My Permission

It was the day I failed her. The day I ran out of words and didn’t know what to do. The day she reached out to me, and I brushed her off because I felt incapable of helping her. That was the day I left my tears on my steering wheel and walked into Bible study with my head held high. And wouldn’t you know that would also be the day our small group leader would single me out. The day he would remind my friends, “Rebekah’s not perfect. Rebekah has tears.”

I hated those tears and how they flowed in that moment. Hated that he had chosen this night to point out my weaknesses, as if he knew how badly I had wronged her.

That was the night we all became real. The night we apologized for not seeing when another was hurting because we were all too self-absorbed to notice that needs existed outside of our own. That’s the night my friend said to me what I should have said to my friend whom I had failed a mere hour before.

“I’m sorry,” he confessed. “I’m sorry.”

Then he told me why. Explained how I had always seemed so above him because he had a past I could never possibly understand. “And that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I should have known…”

And that was my permission… To be free. To be vulnerable. To show that I have weaknesses and prove that I have scars. To not be the strong one for once in my life.

There I sat among a group of my peers who were seeking the Lord together. Some of us had walked with God all our lives. Some of us had only recently found Him. Some of us were by all appearances “perfect,” while others had a past that would make you cringe. But not one of us was better than another. Not one of us had reason to be either proud or ashamed. Because not one of us was free of struggles, temptation, or trials.

We’ve all failed at one point or another. We’ve all found ourselves on our knees, begging for forgiveness.

So how is it that we forget that even our saints are struggling? How is it that we neglect to reach out to those among us who are hurting? And why is it that we hide the depths of our pain behind a thin veneer of perfection?

This is me apologizing for all the times you’ve been overlooked. All the times someone has seen you without ever stopping to imagine what heartache you may be experiencing.

And this is me giving you permission to be honest and vulnerable and free. Because I know what it is to fail, and I know what it is to fear that failure. But mostly, I know what it is to carry things alone.

You are surrounded by a community of believers who are waiting for permission to speak freely.

Give it to them.

Give it to yourself.

You have my permission.

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09/17/2012

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Live the Journey

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Remind Me Once Again…

You know how it is when you keep reading the same thing over and over again in a dozen different places until you start to get the impression that maybe God is trying to tell you something? That happens to me a lot, it would seem.

I’ve been struggling again with embracing the moments. With contenting myself with the journey instead of yearning for the destination. I’d just like to arrive already, you know? So naturally, when I read Hannah Brencher’s latest post, it deeply resonated with me. You should read the whole thing because it’s beautiful, but to give you a summary, Hannah writes of her impatience with God’s plans and how she often wishes He would show her the whole picture instead of revealing it in pieces. And when she thinks about why He doesn’t, she writes:

“He knows I’ll surely bypass the Little Things to get straight to the Big Things. Steer clear of the hard lessons to propel straight towards the goodness. And then never learn how much it means, or how badly I can want something. So bad that I taste it in my tears when I fall asleep in pillow case puddles one night.”

And then there are the words that God whispers to her on those tear stained nights.  “Life will lose its worth if you are only ripping to find the answers,” and “Trust me, trust me, I am the road map much grander than you.”

I marveled at the words. Found myself surrendering everything all over again saying, “Yes, God. I will trust You.”

Then the next morning I got up and picked up Steven James’ book Becoming Real, which I’ve been reading during my quiet times. And there in those pages I found the words, “God doesn’t usually dump the road map for the rest of our lives into our laps and say, ‘See you at the finish line!’ He wants to walk beside us and call out directions along the way.”

“Trust me, trust me, I am the road map much grander than you.”

And I knew He was trying to tell me something with the whole road map illustration. It sounded to me a little something like, “Hey Rebekah, live the journey here!”

Because I’ve been trying too hard to read a map that was never meant to make sense to my mind. Now I’m trying hard to trust that God does know better than me–to convince myself that I don’t need to know that way; I just need to know that God is walking it with me.

Little by little–day by day–I’m learning what it means to surrender. I’m learning how it feels to live.

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09/14/2012

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Heartfelt Prayers

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The Better Thing

A Very Confused, But Heartfelt Prayer

I want to say that I forgive You, but maybe I should be thanking You instead. Thanking You that You know me better than I know myself. Thanking You that You gave me the best thing, even though I couldn’t see it in the moment.

Because, in a way, You gave me exactly what I asked for—exactly what I thought I wanted. And even though it stung enough to make me question if maybe I thought wrong, it’s exactly what I needed after all.

But then, You always give me what I need. Even when it hurts. Even when it breaks my heart and sets my world to spinning. Even when I’m left asking, “Why?” only to find the why in the form of a prayer I prayed only a few weeks or months earlier. I asked for this. And You said, “Okay.” Then You said that things will only get better from here on out.

And I struggled to believe You. To trust Your promise that this was for the best. To know that Your arms would be there to catch me. But now that I’m coming out of the fog, I see… I see that the view is so much better from up here. That the world seems so much brighter from this vantage point.

I think of all the times I believed I knew the best way—believed my will was more important than Yours. You proved me wrong every single time. Not out of spite, but out of love. Because You saw where my path ended. You saw the destruction that waited up ahead. And You guided me—sometimes gently and more often with a forceful tug—onto the better path.

And here I sit once again, in a place more beautiful than I could have imagined when You first said, “Let’s go this way.” And as I look over the view You’ve set before me, I realize there’s really nothing to forgive. So here is my prayer of thanks… For caring enough about me to not give me what I want. For knowing me better than I know myself. And for always giving me the better thing.

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09/10/2012

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Live the Journey

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The Story of Today

This Sunday in youth group, we studied Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refugein him.”

In small group, the idea was to share a story about how God has been good to you. One? Just one story? How could I possibly upload to these girls how great God is with just one story? Which story would I choose? And does one story even begin to cover the hundreds and thousands of days when God has proved Himself absolutely and totally 100% faithful?

I remember one other day in youth group when we talked about Jesus moments and God encounters–those days when there was no denying His hand in our lives. We got a little off track (typical), so I asked the girls why it was so easy to talk about everything but those Jesus moments. One student answered me, “It’s easy to talk about the other stuff because it happens every day. Jesus moments only happen once in awhile.”

I think I literally heard God’s heart breaking in that moment. It was like I could hear Him say, “What? Every single day I’ve breathed into being? Every single sunset I’ve painted? Every single gift I’ve handed to you throughout the course of your day? Did you not appreciate any of it? Did you not see that I was the One giving it to you?”

Sometimes I feel like God is simply jumping up and down on the sidelines of our lives screaming, “Hey, I’m right here! Look at me! Me–your biggest fan.”

And we go right on living as if He isn’t there. As if Jesus moments only happen once in a blue moon. As if we only have one story to tell–one single moment when God actually showed up and changed everything.

And we forget. We forget that ever single moment of our lives is God-breathed. Shaped and crafted by His hands. We forget that every moment is a Jesus moment, alive with wonder and possibility.

We talk about work and school and sports and the weather because, once again, God didn’t show up in a way that we could clearly see.

But I think what we need to ask for is the gift of awareness and the ability to see the numerous gifts God crafts for us each day. Because every single day is another story to tell of how God has been so good. So alive. So wonderful to me.

Let’s not forget to look for the story of today.

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09/07/2012

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Getting Honest

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The Day I Decided She Was Worth It

I’ve been sort of jaded by relationships—the ones that don’t stand the test of time. The ones that clutter the path of my life, leaving glaring evidence that they didn’t end well. For years I’ve tried to blame the other person—the one that did the walking away. I’ve only just begun to realize that I’m just as much at fault for standing back and just watching them leave.

I’ve been thinking about my best friend recently. You know, that shy little girl I met in fourth grade who didn’t turn out to be as shy as she first appeared. At. All. I started thinking about all the not-so-pretty seasons of our friendship (and trust me, there have been a few). And I started wondering how we—being the two opposites that we are—actually overcame all of our struggles and made it this far. How did we survive the tests of time and trial and love and sacrifice and swallowing my pride to say that I—yes, I—am sorry even when I’m still convinced that she’s the one in the wrong?

How is it that my greatest and dearest friendship is the one that has been the hardest for me to keep?

Then I realized that what was really hard about our relationship wasn’t so much what we experienced, but what we survived. Because I faced a lot of junk in my other relationships, too. But the thing that made those different from my relationship with Emily is that, with the others, I simply walked away and left the mess behind. Emily and I couldn’t do that, no matter how badly we sometimes wanted to. No, we had to stay and clean the mess. Take out the trash. Make it so there was room to breathe once more.

And I’m realizing that the key to thriving friendships is not in what you face, but in who you deem worth it. Worth the hardship. Worth the struggle. Worth saving no matter the cost.

Somewhere along the lines of our friendship, I decided Emily was worth it. Because I tried to walk away from her before. When the going got tough, I pulled away—just as I had with every other relationship in my life. But walking away from Emily was like walking away from myself. I needed her too badly—even when I tried to convince myself it was she who needed me.

The thing about relationships is that they are fragile. You’re going to hurt and be hurt. You’re going to fail and be failed. There’s no getting around that—it’s what humans do. And sometimes it’s okay to walk away from those train wreck relationships. But there are a few—precious few—that you must fight for. That you must be willing to lay your pride down to save.

And if you’re looking for the kind of friend who will be there for the rest of your life, here’s my oh so simple, yet impossibly difficult advice: You must decide that she is worth it—so absolutely worth it—because loving her isn’t always going to be easy. But then, the best relationships never are…

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09/03/2012

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Live the Journey

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Life. Is. Messy.

The past few months, God has been teaching me to appreciate things a little more deeply. In the midst of this little life lesson, a few other things have come up. Things like love and trust and daring to take chances in places where I’ve failed in the past. And the more I dwell on these things, the more I come to realize that…

Life. Is. Messy.

You won’t make it to the other side without a few bruises and scars. And if you do, you have not experienced the fullest extent of what life was intended to be.

The other day, I busted out the finger paints at the preschool where I work, and you should have seen those kids’ faces. They know how to live. They know how to dive in with both hands and make the most of the messes. They understand what it means to create beauty from chaos.

You would think that children so young are only just learning to live, but I’ve discovered that life and wonder are something you have from birth and are only in danger of forgetting as the years go by. These kids—three and four years old—know the secret to changing the world. Or perhaps they are merely the only ones who are unafraid to try.

I’ve met a lot of admirable people, and I’ve been inspired by the stories of those who have chased their dreams and caught them. But if you were to ask me right now who I want to be like when I grow up, I would probably name one of those bright-eyed children who left their perfect, messy hand prints on my heart. Because, yes, there have been days when my heart was touched by a motivational story, but these children inspire me. Every. Single. Day.

Because of them, I can find beauty in the hundredth rainbow I draw. Because of them, I clap my hands when their constant excavating of the playground uncovers an earthworm.

“You should paint your nails,” they say, and I do. “You should braid your hair,” they encourage, and I will. Because the simplest things delight them and, somehow, their wide-eyed wonder sinks into my heart and makes me delight in the little things, too.

And if I must grow up, I want to do so with at least a hint of the wonder that dances in the eyes of a three-year-old boy when you let him experience the world upside-down for the umpteenth time. I want to live with his trusting heart that is not the least bit concerned that I may drop him on his head. I want to know what it’s like to live with such abandon. But mostly, I want to dive into life headfirst with both hands, unafraid of the messes. Because as a handful of preschoolers recently made abundantly clear to me…