Unprecedented Honesty (Raquel)
October 12, 2009 by sharppointythings
On some reflection, I may have lied several times yesterday. Several people asked me yesterday how I was and my reply was either, “Tired,” or “I’m okay, but tired”. The tired part was really true, but I’m starting to think that maybe I’m not okay.
I keep thinking I must surely be okay now, because I’m doing better than I was a couple of weeks ago, and yeah, I know I’m fighting some spiritual battles right now, but I’m past the worst of that now, right? (i.e. ’shouldn’t I be over that by now?’). Plus, it’s not like I have anything reasonable to complain about besides that. I watched the kids for 2 1/2 days while James and Theresa were out of town, but Gabrielle had them for several hours on two of those days, and there were no emergencies. I’m getting twinges again like the ones from the cysts (I have a scan on Wednesday and we’ll see if that means they’re coming back or not), but even with mild cold symptoms and lack of sleep, it’s not like this constitutes a debilitating health problem.
But, when you come down to it, those are all just added annoyances, anyway. They’re not really the reason that I’m not okay. Here’s the big issue for the moment:
I’m never going to get married.
Now, I don’t know that’s true, but here’s the thing: I *have* to able to say that if it is true, then I won’t fight God on it. I have to be able to say that He can have anything, even a dream that I hold onto a lot harder than a lot of stuff I actually have in my life. And I have to believe that even then, He is still good.
And that last sentence particularly is giving me fits. Because I know it’s true. I have known it far back as I can remember. But right now it doesn’t feel like it would be true. Does that mean I don’t believe it? I don’t really know.
But I know I need to believe it more than I do. And I know it hurts to let go, more than I can stand. And I know that even when the dust finally settles, and I can clearly see God’s goodness again, this won’t be the last time I have to fight this battle, any more than it’s been the first time, even if this one is more intense than any time I’ve fought it before.
And I have to say, that even knowing it isn’t true, it feels lame that this is such a big deal to me.
This is the part where I’m supposed to sum everything up nicely. Well, I think this is the best I’ve got right now:
Lord, I believe–help my unbelief.
Raquel,
I pray often for you (as I do Gabrielle) that you will be married soon. I do this because marriage is a good desire, and I know that it is important to you. Also, for what it’s worth, you have given me no reason to think that marriage is an idol for you.
At different times in my life, I’ve felt a lot of guilt for wanting to get married. In response, I felt like I had to prove to Jesus that I love Him by killing my desire for marriage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that this is false and dangerously close to a works-centered Gospel worldview.
Jesus loves you, and He has given you a desire that is a good desire. I think it’s safe to say that He doesn’t want you hiding this desire or pretending that it doesn’t exist or feeling guilt-ridden about it. Why would God give you a desire and then make it so the path to having it fulfilled is to pretend that the desire doesn’t exist? Instead, He wants you to acknowledge your need and to come to Him in prayer. Jesus knows you, and He certainly knows when you are frustrated or feeling alone. Guess what? He doesn’t want you to ignore these feelings or to attempt to snuff them out for His sake. He wants you to acknowledge your need and petition Him to help you.
When you acknowlege your needs to Jesus, you are honoring God with your life. By telling Jesus that you are feeling alone, frustrated, or unhappy instead of pretending that you don’t have needs, you are pleasing Him. This very blog post that you have written is proof enough to me that your desire to marry is a genuine need, not an idol.
I realize that I’m rambling, so I’ll wrap this up by saying that you have no reason to feel discouraged. It’s okay to have needs. Just continue to approach God with these needs as you have done in the past. He loves you for coming to Him and acknowleging Him as the one who can help you with your needs.
I’m not sure if anything that I’ve typed here is helpful. In spite of my short-comings in encouraging you, I will continue to pray for you about this matter. Also, if you get a chance, you might find Pastor Ben-Ezra’s sermon from 9-20 to be helpful. The sermon is primarily about worship, but I found it to be insightful with respect to understanding how God feels toward us, thanks to Jesus, when we come to Him with our needs.
http://www.velocity.net/~frc/sermons/sermons.htm
To be clear, the issue is not to try to make myself stop wanting to get married. I understand that would be pointless. It’s being able to say that I won’t fight God even if I don’t think I like His plan. Ever read the Pineapple Story?
Uh, this feels like a terse answer to a long, well-thought out comment, but it’s not meant to be, I’m just tired…
On second thought, I can explain this much better now. First off, I’m not talking about the ‘let go and God will bless that’ theory. It may be true in certain ways, but when it turns into a kind of reverse name-it-and-claim-it, it’s extremely irritating.
There was a point in my life where there were three certain things that I was hanging on to very hard, and was getting upset they weren’t going my way. I finally ‘let go’ of all them, and told God He could do whatever He wanted, he could just take them away from me, or whatever He wanted to do. One of them I ‘got back’ in very expected sort of way, not the way I originally wanted it, but that turned out to be fine. One of them I got back very unexpectedly after I thought it was already gone. One of them never came a hairsbreadth closer to my getting it, and I wouldn’t even want it now if I had the chance.
But here’s the thing: If I specify if/how I get something back when I give it to God, I’m not really letting go of it, am I? And if I’m not, then isn’t that saying it’s more important to me than God is?
>>>To be clear, the issue is not to try to make myself stop wanting to get married. I understand that would be pointless. It’s being able to say that I won’t fight God even if I don’t think I like His plan.<<<
Raquel, deep down I understood the point you were trying to make. I was actually striving to address your frustration over your perceived failure to accept God's plan for your life without fighting Him.
Are you really fighting against God or are you actually saying, "Lord, this is really hard. I want to obey you and be satisfied with your plan, but I'm really struggling with this right now. Please help me." To me, it sounds like you are saying the latter. If you are saying the latter, I'm having trouble comprehending how you don't understand this as letting go of your own wishes in favor of obedience.
Christ has broken the power of sin, and He has paid the penalty for sin; however, we are still affected by the presence of sin. Sanctification, as best as I understand it, is the process of removing the sin from our lives through repentance and faith as the Spirit points sin out to us. Sanctification is not instantaneous; it's hard work.
To me, it sounds like you are doing the hard work of pursuing sanctification. It sounds like you are fighting against your sin, not God. Again, I think that your original blog post is evidence of this. If I understood what you wrote, it sounded like you were saying something along the lines of, "Lord, this is really hard. I want to obey you and be satisfied with your plan, but I'm really struggling with this right now. Please help me." To me, this seems like the sort of thing that you should feel encouraged by.
Raquel, you certainly have more insight into the state of your soul than I do. I'm just telling you that from my vantage point I think you are being hard on yourself when you should feel like you are making progress in being faithful to Jesus.
Obviously, I am not as close of a friend to you as James, Seth, or the other Ben-Lanberries. Please forgive me if I'm stepping on your toes. My sincere goal was to encourage you, not exacerbate your stress level. Again, I am praying for you even if I've given you all the more reason to think of me as a blockhead.
BTW, I don't know the pineapple story. Would it make me less of a blockhead if I did?
I am still close enough to that period in my life that i remember what it feels like. But I’ve also been married long enough to sometimes long for the freedom I had when i was single.
I’ll pray for you… and Gabrielle. I know this will probably sound trite, but you should start living your life as if you will not get married… take more college classes (for fun), network, enjoy the life that God had given you. (At risk of sounding controversial, but with complete respect to your lifeview) Maybe even get a job. Perhaps even become a tiny bit independent.. It IS fun. It is good life experience. And when God has a mate ready for you, he will interrupt your plans, and force you into a loving relationship
Jeremy,
I think maybe we’ve been talking past each other–it also didn’t help that I wrote the post when I was feeling particularly miserable, so what I was trying to say was colored by that. My main point was that fighting this particular battle of sanctification is incredibly painful and difficult. And if I understand your point properly now, it’s that I actually seem to be making progress, which is a lot more helpful than what I was getting from it before.
Jon,
That’s kind of part of the thought process attached to this blog post, actually. The way I might word it would be to stop asking, “What does God want me to do right now, taking into consideration whether it’s still worth doing if it gets interrupted because a guy shows up?” and just ask, “What does God want me to do right now?”
But, silly as this might sound, it’s kind of terrifying to make that switchover.
My experience with big life changes is that they are utterly terrifying, until you take those ‘big steps’. Once you take them, you look back and realize that you’ve only stepped into the kiddy pool, and you wondered why you were so scared to begin with.
In the vein of Jon’s comments, I present Eighth Grade by Chris Rice.