My days have been a wild whirl of trying to get everything done and be present (often overwhelmed) and deal with feeling isolated and out of control--it all felt like it was too much and yet I persevered--that's the crazy part. I don't know how I survived the last season of my life, it was literally the hardest season of my life. I have never been so stressed that I couldn't eat and made myself physically sick--until then!
And now...I'm floating in a pool of calm. I'm basically being paid to be a stay at home mom and I love it! My charge just turned three--months that is :) She sleeps, I read, whisper to God, sing, go on walks. These are the moments to just be--and I relish them, because really, I don't know what my life will look like in the next ten years and this might be the only pool of calm I get for a while. So I bask in it!
God's been speaking to me about marriage--again! (I know, its an old joke. I have no prospects and yet its the one thing that keeps coming up in conversation and in art that I have been doing--I am being taught about marriage and what it means to be a bride--even though I may never be one! haha...this seems to be a joke, but I know it isn't cruel--God's not like that. I may never be married, but marriage is one of the thrilling/mundane/original/common/out-of-this-world mysteries of this life--I don't mind learning!) And we're back...anyways, God revealed to me through an awesome Thomas Merton book that I had put my hope in marriage. This was something that I had no conscious idea of--until I read:
"All sin is rooted in the failure of love. All sin is a withdrawal of love from God, in order to love something else. Sin sets boundaries to our hope, and locks our love in prison. If we place our last end in something limited, we have withdrawn our hearts entirely from the service of the living God. If we continue to love Him as our end, but place our hope in something else together with Him, our love and our hope are not what they should be, for no man can serve two masters." (pg. 18 in No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton)
My "something else together with Him" had been marriage! Weird, I never realized...then I was like, why would I hope in marriage? what's the deal with that? The answer came immeadiately: "If I am married, it means that someone else thinks I have worth. Someone else sees me as valuable." WHOA!!! Criminey! (and I don't use that word) I was trying to answer that question and fend off that lie of "You are worthless" (which by the way, hangs over my whole family) by putting my hope in marriage.
Someday when you are married--you will have worth.
Someday when you are married--you will have a future.
Someday when you are married--you will have someone who sticks by you forever.
Someday when you are married--you won't be lonely.
Isn't it crazy what we believe and where we look for our satisfaction and hope? I was the kid who was terrified of marriage--so why would I have these beliefs about it? Perhaps the reason I was terrified was because if I did get married and it turned out that none of these hopes would be fulfilled, I would have nowhere else to turn. And in my mind, it was better not even to broach the subject--just reject it completely and all that it could offer and stay safe.
Aren't you glad God entered the picture of my life?
He calls me Bride. And He already answers all those questions and fulfills all my hopes completely without my having to persuade Him or make Him see that I'm worth it. What a hope, what a true hope that is...
Maybe I will get married someday. Maybe I'll remain single for the rest of my life. In any case, I know who holds my future. My hope is secure.
I'm reading Elisabeth Elliot's book Passion and Purity again with a new perspective. (In it she writes about the journey of her five? year relationship with Jim Elliot which lead to their eventual marriage.) I'm free to look at relationships and romance and the possibility of marriage without fear. I'm free to dream and wish without being overwhelmed--being married or not is no longer a live or die moment. If it happens, hallelujah!, and if not my hope remains. I am free--in a way I haven't been for years.
From Elisabeth's book:
"The greater the potential for good, the greater the potential for evil. That is what Jim and I found in the force of the love we bore for each other...A system of fixed values and relations held us apart, each holding the other in reverence for the Owner. His we were, all the rights were, all the prerogatives to give or to withhold according to the pattern of His will, which remained as yet a mystery to us...For us, this was the way we had to walk, and we walked it, Jim seeing it his duty to protect me, I seeing it mine to wait quietly, not to attempt to woo or entice..."
Then she goes on to quote Christina Rossetti's poem:
"Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke,--
I love, as you would have me, God the most;
Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,
Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look,
Unready to forego what I forsook;
This say I, having counted up the cost,
This, though I be the feeblest of God's host,
Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you over-much;
I love Him more, so let me love you too;
Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him,
I cannot love Him, if I love not you."
May I love like that.
This is held firmly in Your hands. Thank You Papa.
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