Monthly Archives: November 2012

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11/30/2012

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A Light That Shines in the Darkness

My mom recently asked me if I could recommend any Christian books my little sister could read. Having been reading young adult fiction for the last year, my list of “Christian” books isn’t very large. When I explained that fact to my mother, she teased me for my sudden fascination with “heathen” books and music.

Well, you know what they say. When you turn a sheltered, homeschooled child out on her own…

But seriously. My mom was completely messing with me, but if I’m honest with myself, I do sometimes fear that the stuff I’ve been reading is going to color my world with shades of gray (but not fifty shades of it because I’m not even touching that). So I started looking at the shape my life has taken since I stepped outside of the Christian genre. This may sound strange to say, but I think I’m better for it.

Young adult fiction challenges me in a way that Christian fiction never did because instead of flowing smoothly with the worldview I was raised with, it grates against every fiber of my core. There have been books that I’ve cringed through and others that I’ve set aside because they’re not even worth finishing. They present a series of “what if’s” that Christian fiction had protected me from.

The thing is… I like being challenged. I like questioning my convictions and wondering how they would hold up under fire. I like being stirred to anger or moved to brokenness over the scenarios that present themselves to me. I like when a song comes on the radio and I’m reminded to pray for the state of my world… even if it means I have to change the channel every couple of songs.

And I know there is a fine line between convictions and compromise. I know that when you walk too closely to the edge, there’s always a chance of falling. That’s why I spend my mornings with a Bible on my lap and a pen in my hand. That’s why I still crank up the praise music and dance my heart out in worship. That’s why I cling to the promise that God will hold me up if I will simply trust in Him.

Over the past year, my calling has shifted in so many ways. I stopped working at a mission’s organization because I wanted to write full time and because I realized that my calling was to this nation, not the nations. I decided that I’m writing YA fiction with an underlying theme of grace rather than overtly Christian fiction.

Somewhere in the course of the past year, I realized that I don’t want to be a light that shines amidst all the other candles; I want to be the one who stands alone in the dark.

And I know that suggests that I’m going to spend a large portion of my time feeling very, very lonely, but I’ll keep shining—keep calling others forth—hoping that I will one day leave a trail of bright, flickering flames where there was once nothing but darkness.

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11/26/2012

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Growing Pains

“The prerequisites for growth,” Bruce Mau said, are “the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.” Perhaps that is why so many of us reach a point where we simply stop growing. It’s not easy to let an event change us from the inside out.

Or perhaps we simply reach that place where our bodies have ceased growing and we think maybe the rest of us has grown up as well. Now there’s a laughable thought.

I’ve said before that I’m the kind of girl who always had a plan. I always imagined I had my life figured out. I always thought I knew exactly what I wanted. Maybe that’s why I stopped growing. Maybe when I reached that place where my mornings were devoted to my writing, I thought I had finally arrived.

Because this is what I wanted. And even though I knew there was always room for growth, I had let myself believe it could only be the small stuff from here on out. I was settled. I was certain. I was in that dangerously comfortable place… until God reminded me of how often I’m more like a three-year-old girl in her pink tutu and plastic tiara, claiming that I’m going to be a princess when I grow up (which I don’t think I ever actually said growing up, but the principle remains and you know that every three-year-old girl has thought it).

“Darling,” God whispered, “you’re still growing. You’re still in the stages of becoming and discovering and finding it’s not always so easy to stand with your head held high.”

The past few weeks, God and I have been discussing my flaws and, let me tell you, there’s a reason they call them growing pains instead of growing pleasures. I’m learning that there is a price to pay for the joy of becoming. Slowly but surely, I’m accepting the pain for the blessing it truly is.

And if you’re finding it hard to move past the growing pains, just remember that those sharp pangs in your ankles rendering it hard to walk right now are going to make you a little more surefooted in the future. The spasms shooting up your arms are making you strong enough to carry the loads you were never able to shoulder in the past.

Because Little One, Little One, you were made for so much more… You were meant to be so much bigger. You were created for greater things.

But you’re still growing. And it still hurts, though sometimes it’s glorious to realize how tall you’re now standing. But you were made for greater heights than this. For longer reach. So don’t you dare become content to stay just as you are. Because you’re still growing. And yes, it’s a painfully glorious thing.

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11/23/2012

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Fairytale Fallacies

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Best Romance Here!

So, when the girl who first started blogging about singleness and waiting and fairytales and the like hasn’t talked about relationships for months, you should probably see it coming. Also, you can blame it on the holidays and all those people who say that it sucks to be single this time of year. (Side Note: I have never and will never agree with that statement. It’s always great to be single. Except when you’re not.)

You read about relationships everywhere. I was on facebook the other day and saw an ad with the line, “You can’t leave. I will make you my bride.” The ad boasted “Best Romance Here!”

Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got? Because it sounds sort of creepy/stalker-ish to me.

But maybe I’m a skeptic. After all, I held onto the adage that “boys are icky” until the age of 13 16 21. I’m not the kind of girl to swoon at cliched movie lines. And maybe that’s not fair of me. After all, I’ve never been the recipient of one of those cliches (at least, not seriously). And since I’ve watched far more practical people fall prey to cupid’s arrows, it’s hard for me to assume that I would be immune to cheesy lines like that.

In fact, there was this one time that a friend—a friend!—whom I swapped states with over Christmas suggested that we could wave as we passed on the highway. I stared at the comment on my computer screen, teary-eyed, until my mom thought she was going to have to track down a thermometer. If the first three months of homesickness could do that to me, I hate to think what might happen when a guy shows up in my life.

Yes, I should probably stop laughing because, one day, Prince Cheesy is going to come along and sweep me off my feet with an endless barrage of cliches.

But mostly, it’s not the cliches that bother me. Sure, those are the lines at which I roll my eyes and say, “Oh, puh-leese,” but the lines that really get to me are the ones that are meant to be romantic and turn out to be more suggestive and degrading. Those are the ones that make me wonder if we’ve somehow cheapened love.

We’ve evolved past the “helpless heroines” of the fairytales and crafted stories better suited to our culture. And we call those love-at-first-sight one-night-stands romantic.

Sometimes I’ll watch a movie like Shall We Dance? and I’ll think that Hollywood finally got it right. When I hear Susan Sarandon talk about why people get married, I think, “Yes, yes, yes. That’s what I want. I want someone to care about the good things and the bad things and the mundane things, and I want to care about his mundane things, too.”

The problem with our world is that we’ve tried to make love all about us—what we want and need and feel. That’s why divorce is so prevalent in our culture. When the other person fails us, we give up, wondering what went wrong. I’ll tell you what went wrong. We’ve strayed from God’s command to selflessly love and have taught ourselves to love selfishly. We’ve made it so that it was never about the other person at all.

We feed each other lines and lyrics that are sprinkled with cliches, but hold back the one thing the other most desperately needs from us: Love. We clutch it with our fingertips and catch it on our tongues because the word seems almost foreign tumbling from our lips.

Love. The real kind. The genuine version. The one that revolves around the other person rather than me. That’s what I want to offer the world. And if it’s not too much to ask, that’s what I’d like to one day be returned to me.

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11/19/2012

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Things That Inspire

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Holding on for Balance

You would think by now I would be used to the strange ways in which God reveals Himself, but I really wasn’t expecting Him to use a self-balancing unicycle. Of course, until yesterday, I had never even heard of a self-balancing unicycle, so I guess my surprise is sort of easy to explain.

But there I was at my friend’s house, watching him demonstrate this fascinating contraption that propels itself forward without pedals. He explained it as a segway without handlebars.

Now, I should probably point out that it’s not entirely self-balancing. While it won’t tip forward or backward, sideways is an entirely different matter. The trick to riding it, Dave said, is to swivel your hips. You can probably imagine the amount of entertainment that ensued. Then it came time for me to be the entertainment.

I was off to a rough start, muttering something about the self-balancing joke, when Dave came up beside me and offered his arm for balance. And then, rather shakily, I was off—propelling forward across the yard. Dave walked alongside me, my hand clutching his arm. Then he sort of jogged alongside me and my hand was merely resting on his sleeve, just in case.

Maybe I was distracted by the fact that I was finally moving, or maybe I simply relied too heavily on Dave. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t long before the contraption wobbled and my fingers curled around Dave’s arm once more.

I felt like a child again. Learning to walk with my hands wrapped around my mother’s fingers. Learning to ride a bike with my dad holding onto the handlebars.

Then I started to think of trying to navigate life without God at my side.

I imagine it would look a lot like trying to ride that unicycle without holding onto Dave’s arm. Because despite his assurances that I was a natural, I knew he was the only thing keeping me upright most of the time. I knew I never would have gotten to the point of balancing on my own without first having his arm there to rise and fall, counterbalancing my weight and inspiring the confidence I needed to keep pressing on. I’d have been lost without his gentle reminders to shift my hips and lean forward—always lean forward. The simple truth of the matter is this:

The only reason I was able to start going at all was because I knew he was there to catch me at the first hint of trouble.

And it reminds me of all the times my life has gotten a little shaky and I find myself clinging to God’s arm, struggling to stay upright. It reminds me of all the times I’ve been distracted by the world around me, forgetting those crucial truths that have brought me this far. Just like with the self-balancing unicycle, I jolt upright and reach for anything that will keep me from falling.

That’s when I hear His voice in my ear. “It’s all right. You’ve just got to shift your hips and keep leaning forward—always lean forward.”

And I know the only reason I live so freely is because I have Him by my side. His arm is the one I cling to when the world rocks so crazily that I forget how to steer.

I take more risks than I would without Him because I know He’s there to catch me if I fall. And I feel the smile spread across my face when I’m finally moving forward, almost on my own. But I’m not ready to let go, no sir. I pray I’ll never let go.

Because I know my true security comes from the feel of His arm beneath my hand—the knowing that He will be there to catch me if ever I should fall.

And so I navigate life—a little shakily—but ever so certain of the God at my side.

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11/16/2012

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The Five Year Plan

A friend and I were recently talking about the problem with the question, “What’s your five year plan?”

See, it sounds like a decent question to ask someone in an interview, but here’s where the question falls short:

What was your plan five years ago?

If you tell me that you’re actually living it, I’ll be surprised and more than a little impressed. Because I, too, thought I had a grasp on what I’d be doing with my life today. But if you had told me five years ago that I would have stopped working at Advancing Native Missions for any reason other than marriage, I would have laughed in your face.

Five year plans aren’t bad in and of themselves. It’s good to have goals. It’s good to have an idea of where you’re going in life.

But when you’re so caught up in those plans you made five years ago that you can’t see how God is reshaping your dream, your plan becomes a problem. Your goal becomes your god.

And that’s where I was a little over a year ago—living the only dream I had ever dreamed. It was all I ever wanted from the time I was eight years old and read a story about Amy Carmichael and her beautiful brown eyes that saved the lives of countless children. I know, I was a rather ambitious eight year old. But those ambitions remained for the next ten years until I could finally touch them. I was there. Doing everything I ever dreamed I would be doing.

And then one day I realized I wasn’t dreaming anymore. Maybe in my heart of hearts I still wanted to be an Amy Carmichael, but somewhere along the line, my idea of ministry had changed.

When you dream one dream for twelve years, it can be absolutely terrifying to let it go.

I wrestled for months with the knowing in my heart. The knowing that it was time to let go and move on. But I was afraid. I was ever so afraid of dreaming a new dream. I was absolutely terrified of giving up the familiar.

This was uncharted territory I was exploring. This was never in the plan. Well, it was in The Plan, just not my plan.

And in the past year I’ve learned that it’s okay to throw my plans out the window. It’s okay to admit that I may have been wrong about the timing. And that maybe my dream wasn’t supposed to last five years after all.

Because I’m not the girl I was five years ago. Nor am I the girl I once imagined I would be.

But I’m finally coming to terms with that. I’m finally deciding that maybe this is where I was meant to be all along. And maybe life has grander adventures in store than the ones I conjured up with my limited imagination.

Today if you ask me my five year plan, I’ll tell you to ask The Man Upstairs. Because I’m done making plans for Him to interrupt. I think maybe it’s best if I just let Him lead me step by step.

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11/12/2012

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Washed in the Waters

The other day, I had to tell the story of Naaman from memory. Why? Because it was depicted on a coloring sheet at the preschool where I work and I have a class of overly curious four year olds. So there I was, wishing that someone had been clever enough to include this particular passage of scripture in the story Bible we use in the classroom. Wishing the coloring picture had been of Jonah or Esther or one of those other classic stories that I can tell backwards and forwards and maybe even upside down. But no, it was Naaman. Why? Because God apparently had something to teach me.

I decided to tell my class that Naaman was sick and his servant girl (whose unwavering faith in God I praised) suggested that he go see the prophet Elisha who told him to wash himself in a pool of water seven times and he would be healed.

I thought of that story again today and looked it up to see how I had done in my spontaneous retelling. (Leprosy is a sickness, right?) The thing that jumped out at me was something I forgot… or maybe something that had simply never seemed vital until today.

Naaman’s reaction when Elisha told him to wash himself in the Jordan River (Yeah, it was a river, not a pool. I must have been thinking about that guy in the New Testament. Technicality. But I did get the number right. So do I pass the test?)… Well, it’s a pretty interesting reaction. Naaman actually gets mad.

“I thought he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy,” he says in 2 Kings 5:11. The next verse explains that Naaman walked away in a rage. Imagine that. This guy actually gets ticked off because Elisha doesn’t come out looking like Obi-Wan in his over-sized robe while waving his hand in the air and saying, “You do not have leprosy.”

Naaman started walking away from his miracle because it didn’t come in the form he was expecting.
It was supposed to be over with a wave of Elisha’s hand. This whole swimming lesson was a bit ridiculous. Because it’s not like Naaman had never bathed before. Leprosy wasn’t something you could simply wash away.

He didn’t understand that all God really wanted from him was obedience.

Thankfully his servants pointed out that he was being ridiculous and convinced him that it was time for a bath.

In Naaman’s defense, I’m willing to bet that his doubts weren’t entirely misplaced. I imagine that he had tried many remedies. After all, he was a wealthy, highly respected man who probably had connections to some pretty successful doctors. But none of them had a cure for his leprosy. Nothing he had ever tried before actually helped.

Now here he was again—justifiably skeptical—standing at the edge of a river where the God who doesn’t play Jedi mind tricks asked him if he really had enough faith to be healed.

Naaman immersed himself in a promise.

Once…
Twice…
Seven times.

And he was healed. Instantly.

And that’s when Naaman knew that there was no God in all the world except the God of Israel.

May we all have to faith to immerse ourselves in God’s promises and let the waves of His love and mercy wash all our impurities away.

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11/09/2012

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Love Letters

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Let’s Make This About You

One day I volunteered to drive some friends to the airport at four in the morning. I did it so another friend wouldn’t have to because she had been working long hours and hadn’t been feeling well, and I thought she deserved to sleep in on that particular Saturday morning. Now, I know you’re thinking about what a nice, considerate person I am and that I’m going to lose my reward in heaven for announcing that good deed in such a public manner. Well, you’re probably right about the heavenly reward, but you’d be wrong to assume that I’m considerate.

Because thinking of others first certainly does not come naturally to me.

Generally, I’m happy to help out… if you ask me to. Give me clear instructions and I’m all over the task—with a smile on my face, even. Just don’t expect me to go around looking for ways to serve, because I am often oblivious to the fact that there are dishes to be done and laundry to be folded and hey, it would be nice if someone would clear the table, hint, hint. Because most of the time, I’m not thinking about any of those things. I’m thinking about me.

I’m thinking about what I want and what I need and how I feel and a dozen other things that revolve around me, me, me.

That’s what’s wrong with our world. Well, not me. (At least, not always me, though I’ve certainly added to the load of problems on numerous occasions and there are several people who will probably tell you, “Yes, Rebekah is the problem.”) But the real problem with our world is its billions of inhabitants with their inherent human natures that are all screaming, “Me, me, me!”

And I should know better. I should remember that the most satisfying moments of my life have been the ones in which I served others. And yet, for too long, my life (My life–see, there I go again with the “me” thing) has been all about me.

Let’s make this about your hopes and your dreams and your struggles.

I want to know how I can love you.
Pray for you.
Lift you up.

I want to know the kind of love letter you need from me.

So be honest with me in the comments or shoot me an email at beyondwaiting@yahoo.com.

Because I really do want to break this selfishness habit. And I really do want this post—this blog, this life—to be
All.
About.
You.

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11/05/2012

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Beautiful Ending

You would think that Mary, of all people, would get it. After all, she was the one to whom the angel appeared. She knew from the start that the child she carried would be the Messiah.

With a birth announcement like that, you’d think it would be hard to forget who Jesus really was.

But apparently it wasn’t. If you read the first few chapters of Luke, you’ll find that Mary “treasured” and “pondered” the events of Jesus’ childhood, “marveled” at the prophecies spoken at His birth, and was “astonished” to find Him imparting wisdom to the teachers in the temple courts.

And I have to wonder how she could so easily forget who He was. Did staring into the eyes of a helpless babe somehow lessen her view of the Messiah? Did she not understand what she had signed up for? Did she ever get it at all? Because when I look at Mary’s life after that moment she said yes to God, I don’t see signs of that inspiring faith we’ve all learned to admire.

Sure, there was the day she urged Jesus into starting off His ministry by transforming a bit of water into wine, but then there was the day she and her other sons went to “take charge of Him,” convinced He was out of His mind (Mark 3:21).

What happened to her dream? What happened to her faith? And perhaps most importantly… how many times have I asked myself the same questions?

How many times have I abandoned a dream because I forget how clearly God breathed it into being? How many times have I “treasured” and “pondered” and “marveled” at things God had promised me all along? How many times have I found myself astonished that God is actually true to His word and that He is finishing the work He began in me?

I think that once upon a time, I prayed for a faith like Mary’s and it seems like I got it–though it’s not all I dreamed it would be. Because I missed a vital part of the story: the ending.

The last time we see Mary in scripture, she’s weeping at the foot of the cross. There’s no resurrection for her. I mean, there was, obviously, but it’s never recorded through her eyes. Our final picture of Mary is a broken, doubting woman living out the worst day of her life.

And if that’s where Mary’s faith will leave me, I’m reneging on my prayer. Because I don’t want to be guilty of forgetting God’s promise. I don’t want to stand weeping at the death of my dreams without ever getting to see the resurrection.

I want the kind of beautiful ending that finds me in the arms of God in the final scene.

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11/02/2012

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Embrace Truth

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Do I Lack Faith?

I’ve been reading this devotional book that was written by someone who is really big on faith promise stuff. Now, before I delve into this any deeper, let me just say that I do believe faith is important and there are tons of scriptures about having faith and living in faith and speaking in faith. And I believe in every single one of them. I believe in claiming God’s promises and speaking life over my loved ones.

So my problem with the faith promise stuff isn’t a lack of belief, but more of a disappointment in the way that it is presented. Because when you tell a story about standing outside your house reciting Psalm 91 when a twister is headed directly your way then tell me that God can vanquish my storms just like He did yours… It’s not that I don’t believe it; it’s just that I question the sanity of staring down a tornado. And I don’t doubt that this family was clearly instructed by God to pray over their house. I don’t doubt that God worked this miracle for them. But you can bet I wasn’t standing in the rain this week, telling Hurricane Sandy to bypass my house in Jesus’ name.

There’s a difference between acting in obedience and asking God for a miracle. If you strongly feel that God is telling you to do something that doesn’t make sense in the natural, by all means, step out in faith. But don’t tell me that if I have faith, God will do X, Y, Z. Because He doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we want Him to.

How do I know this? Because I’ve been there. I’ve been the ten-year-old girl, standing in her grandparent’s bedroom and watching the last shred of life slip from her grandmother’s lungs.

Looking back, I know that there wasn’t an ounce of my ten-year-old body that didn’t believe God could heal her. I was young and innocent and didn’t have reason to doubt that God would do anything BUT take that cancer away from her. Instead, that cancer took her away from me. And in the months that followed her death I started to wonder if maybe I had done something wrong. Maybe I didn’t pray hard enough. Maybe I didn’t believe deep enough. And maybe God would have healed her if only I had gotten those things right.

That’s a terrible thing for a ten-year-old to believe. For anyone to believe.

So I said to God, “I need answers.” Then I picked up The Cross Examination of Jesus Christ and started to read that instead. I came to this part that tells the story of the paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof to meet Jesus (Luke 5). In the book, the story cuts off at the part that said the man’s sins were forgiven. Then the author grudgingly fills in the rest of the story before posing the question: “If the story had ended without Jesus providing physical healing, how would you feel about it?”

And I found that God provided my answer in the midst of Randy Singer’s musings:

“But at the end of the day, we must get comfortable with an unyielding truth: Jesus will always answer our prayers for forgiveness, but he doesn’t always answer our prayers for healing. At least not the way we want them answered.”

I think this passage of Scripture makes it pretty clear what God’s priorities are. When God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want Him to, it’s not that He’s punishing us for a lack of faith; it’s because He is busy healing a much deeper hurt. And maybe that’s the greater miracle.

Maybe that’s what our hearts were really asking for all along.