Category: Christian Living

I made a new friend this month.  Her name is Gratitude.  For years she was the dusty old acquaintance to whom I paid a cursory nod on all the appropriate occasions—anniversaries, birthdays, graduations.  But I never invited her into my daily life, and certainly not into my sorrow.  Not until recently.

I picked up a book about Gratitude, and to my surprise discovered that I barely knew her.  In all my years, I had hardly scratched the surface of all that she is and all that she can be.

So I resolved to get to know her.  Intentionally, this time.  I began to welcome her into my life.  At first, it was just in the peaceful moments.  I took her along on my morning jog, and discovered that she brought the world to life around me.  She made the sunshine brighter, the wind cooler, the trees grander.  She made me notice tiny blessings I’d never seen before.  Made me feel the strength of my body, able to run, the clarity of my mind able to think, the grace of my God evident all around me.

I took her out for coffee dates and explored her with fresh eyes.  And she became to me a most pleasant companion.  And then one day, she surprised me by showing up in the midst of my appointment with Pity, when I hadn’t invited her.  She tapped me on the shoulder as I was rehearsing my complaints, and at first I wanted to tell her to go away.  “Come back another time,” I wanted to say.  “This is no place for you.”  But she looked at Pity so sternly that I suddenly realized Gratitude can be fierce.  She was determined to stay, and at last Pity gave way to her.  Then, with a smile, Gratitude introduced me to her very best friend.  “This,” she said softly, “is Joy.  She loves to come along with me everywhere I go.”

I liked Joy immensely, and I hoped she’d never leave.  But I had a secret, and I knew that eventually it would jeopardize my friendships with Gratitude and Joy.  You see, I was in a partnership—I had been for years—with two very strong tyrants.  They burst into my home whenever they pleased, several times a day, and they moved me at their will, and I believed I was powerless against them.  One was loud and rude and he called himself Anger, and the other was monstrously large and named himself Pride.

They loved to visit me when the house was a wreck and the kids were a mess and dinner was burnt on the stove.  And always after they left, they sent Regret and Sorrow in their wake.  One day when I was lost in their grip, I noticed a spark of sunshine on the floor, so small I had to squint to see it.  It climbed into my palm and when I held it to my face, I was shocked to see that it was Gratitude, shrunken so that she was scarcely larger than a dandelion.  “How dare you try to enter here!”  I screamed into her face.  And with Anger and Pride rallying around, I yelled, “Get out!  Get out!  I don’t want to see you now!”

At last she spoke in the faintest voice, and this is what she said: “If you bid me go, I will go.  But I must warn you, I have to take Joy with me.  But,” she said, and I thought her voice grew, “If you want me to stay, I will fight for you.”

I winced in dismay for my heart was torn.  “But you are so small,” I finally said.  “How can you ever win?”

“You must feed me,” she said.  “And hold me.  And welcome me.  And if you do, I will grow so vast that I promise I will outshine these monsters holding onto you.  I,” she said firmly, “am very powerful.”

Gratitude had enchanted me, and amused me, and even surprised me.  But that day she rescued me.  That day I learned that Gratitude can do more than just dance in the sun—she can wage war in the darkness.  “Yes,” I told her when Anger and Pride had fled and Joy again was holding my hand.  “Yes, Gratitude, my dearest friend—you are very powerful, indeed.”

A response to all I am learning from Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s book, Choosing Gratitude.

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Have you ever noticed that suffering makes us keenly aware of the blessings of others?  It’s the woman recovering from a miscarriage who’s the first to notice all the pregnant bellies in the grocery store.  The laid-off employee who feels like every Facebook friend is celebrating a fulfilling career.  The spread-thin single mom, who watches husbands hauling baby carriers into church.

There was a season in my life when it felt like God said, “No,” to every request I asked of Him.  I stored up those “No’s” in my heart like an old woman in a house full of cats, daily nursing my grievances with God.  Finally, out of nowhere, I received an unexpected blessing.  It was a very small thing, so when it fell through a few months later, my husband couldn’t understand why I took it so hard.  As we cooked in the kitchen (well, technically he was cooking and I was sobbing on a stool), I finally managed to choke, “It just felt like it was a sign that God still loved me.”

In the weeks to come, God impressed three truths upon me that deeply comforted me and radically changed my perspective.  The first was this:

I do not need a single blessing from God to know that He loves me.  I only need to look to the cross to know that He loves me.  When we look solely at the circumstances of our lives, it often feels like God plays favorites.  Like He loves sweet Susie Jane with her happy family and easy life more than he loves you and me.  I used to comfort myself by thinking that one day the boot may drop on Susie Jane’s perfect life, too.  But it may not.  People really do face varying degrees of suffering while on earth.  And even if the boot did squash Susie Jane for a season, is it really biblical to delight in her suffering?  To hope for it, even?  Of course not.

I still remember the day God whispered those bolded words above into my heart.  All at once I saw the cross again.  And just like that, I had proof…MIGHTY proof that God had not forgotten me.  Just like that, I didn’t need to test Him anymore, because the test had been given on a hill long ago, and He had passed with flying colors.  Months later, my insecurity was triggered all over again when a sweet friend received the very blessing I ached for.  As I cried to God in bed, I could almost hear Him pleading with such earnest passion, “Look to the cross!  I promise I love you–look to the cross!”  You know what?  In a thousand years I wouldn’t trade that intimate and powerful moment for a fleeting, earthly blessing.  Which brings me to lesson #2:

In God’s economy, spiritual blessing always outweighs earthly blessing.  In the allegorical book, Hinds Feet on High Places, Much-Afraid embarks on a journey to the High Places.  As she is about to set off, the Shepherd promises her, “I have most carefully chosen for you two of the very best and strongest guides.”  Much-Afraid is horrified to learn that the guides are named Suffering and Sorrow.  But later in her journey, when the Shepherd asks her how she feels about them, this is what she says:

“I never could have believed it possible, Shepherd, but in a way I have come to love them…They do truly want to get me up to the High Places, not just because it is the commandment which You have given them, but also because they want a horrid coward like myself to get there and be changed.  You know, Shepherd, it makes a great difference in my feelings towards them not to look upon them any longer with dread, but as friends who want to help me.”

This is exactly what passages like James 1:2-4 want us to see!  God designs suffering to make us more like Christ.  Much as I despise encountering Sorrow and Suffering on my own journey, they are the most excellent tutors I have ever known.  And nothing is more encouraging than looking back over my life and realizing that because of them, I am no longer the cowardly girl I once was…or the arrogant teenager…or the idolatrous young adult.  That is the truest blessing.  Becoming like Jesus is more valuable than birthing children, or winning awards, or finding a spouse, or any other earthly blessing we could ever beg for.

I am not called to evaluate the lives and circumstances of others.  I am only called to follow God myself.  The final stop on my journey to accepting personal suffering in light of other people’s prosperity was John 21.  Right after Jesus prophesies about Peter’s future death, Peter glances at John and says exactly what I would’ve said: “Lord, what about this man?”  To which Jesus beautifully replies, “If it is my will that he remain (alive) until I come, what is that to you?  You follow me!”

Wow.  And ouch.  If it is My will, that she receive the blessing you wanted, what is that to you?  If it is My will to write the story of your life completely differently than you wanted Me to, what is that to you?  If it is My will to say “yes” to him and “no” to you, what is that to you?  You follow me.

Dear believer, you and I are called to one thing only.  Jesus Himself.  To love Him enough to follow Him…no matter what.  As Much-Afraid finally came to see in the Valley of Loss: “Right down in the depths of her own heart she really had but one passionate desire, not for the things which the Shepherd had promised, but for Himself.  All she wanted was to be allowed to follow Him forever.”

Sometimes only valleys and deserts can teach us that.

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What do I want to do with my life?  If I could capture the thirty-somethings in a single sentence, that would be it.  Sure, you think about this question from time to time before you’re thirty, but it’s always with an air of optimistic ambition.  Mommy, I want to be a princess.  I want to be an astronaut.  Maybe I’ll be a doctor.  Or a novelist.  Then college rolls around and let’s be honest, you’re a little distracted by all the cute coeds, and you major in something fascinating but less-than-marketable like sociology or humanities.  Or, you get that accounting degree, and realize crunching numbers isn’t as fulfilling as you’d hoped.  And if, somewhere along this journey you also get married, it only becomes more complicated.  You may be one of the fortunate few who’s found their niche in a field they love, while your spouse is the barista with a Humanities degree.

One way or another, you find yourself going through the motions with an irritating sense of dissatisfaction.  What do I want to do with my life?  The question is no longer dusted with optimism, so much as frayed with panic.  If you’re a Christian, you may phrase it a little differently: What does God want me to do with my life?  Yes, we know the biblical commands.  He wants us to be holy, to love Him more than anything else, to make disciples of all nations.  But specifically, what does He want me to do?  How does He want me to fulfill His commands?  As a godly doctor, a missionary, a piano teacher?  How??  

And so emerge an array of different thirty-something approaches.  There are the Plodders, who accept the fact that work and passion may not fit in the same sentence.  They work in order to do the things they are passionate about.  Then there are the Risk-Takers.  They are the start-your-own-business, move-across-the-globe, take-a-year-off-and-write-that-book kind of people, who would rather try and fail then settle for ho-hum.  There are the ADD Go-Getters who find a new career calling every thirty days.  The In-Transition-ers who live in a constant state of waiting.  Waiting for the kids to get a little older, the savings account to get a little heftier, the right door to swing open.  And of course, there are the Frustrated Bloggers, who eat Rice Krispy treats and write to try and make sense of it all.

Naturally, there are exceptions, too.  There are the thirty-somethings who live like the fifty-somethings, with an enviable sense of “arrival.”  Fulfilling job, fat mortgage, deep roots…ah, establishment!  I will confess, this is the life I long for.  As a former missionary kid who often felt rootless, I long to put roots down so deeply it takes the apocalypse to lift them.  But in the midst of the thirty-something what-do-I-do-with-my-life epidemic, I have found one comfort worth treasuring: Wandering can be worshipful.

I think there are two types of wandering in the Bible.  There is the godless, Israelite-like wandering as a result of unbelief.  This wandering is truly aimless, and unless something changes, hopeless.  But there is also a nomadic type of wandering in the Bible.  Abraham living in tents.  Jacob sleeping on a stone.  Joseph sitting in prison 200 miles from home.  Surely, each of them must have felt just a little bit lost sometimes.  Uncertain, clueless, and even afraid.  But unlike the Israelites in the desert, each of these men allowed their endless not-knowing to drive them to desperate dependence on Someone Greater than themselves.

Wandering has the ability to cripple our sense of sufficiency.  To expose our vulnerability.  To toss us like a drowning child into the arms of God.  In this way, wandering can be worshipful.  It can be a daily song of faith.  What does God want me to do with my life?  Honestly, I don’t exactly know.  I know He wants me to be a wife, and a mother.  To honor Him in all that I do, and with all that I am.  I know He wants me to have a heart like His, burdened for His mission.  But I don’t know a whole lot of details.  And I’m becoming more at peace with that, for three reasons:

I know the character of God.  I know He is faithful yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Dt 7:9).  I know He is flawlessly sovereign (Pro 19:21).  He has not forgotten me, but rather loves me (Ps 103:17), intercedes for me (Rom 8:26), works within me for His good pleasure (Phil 2:13), and has a plan for my life that will bring Himself glory (Jer 29:11).

I know the desires of my heart.  I know that I want to glorify God more than anything else.  I’m not wandering because I’ve closed my spirit to God’s call, hardened my heart in unbelief, or decided to pursue worldly ambitions.  I’m not saying my motives are always pure, but I am saying the cry of my heart is to do whatever God wants me to do.  Therefore, I can have the confidence of I John 5:14-15.  Because I am praying in line with God’s will, asking for His direction for my life, I can rest assured He will hear and answer me.

I know the final destination.  Last of all, I know that one day I will live in that permanently rooted place of endless belonging, for which my soul aches.  It won’t be in sunny Georgia, or Metro Manila, or the heart of Africa.  It will be etched in eternity.  To any other wandering thirty-somethings who love Jesus and are weary in the journey, the final destination is coming.  And when it does, it will be even more satisfying than a fulfilling job, fat mortgage, and fifty-something sense of “arrival.”  It will be true arrival, home.

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Sometimes I feel like a total mess.  I’m not talking about day-old mascara and greasy hair.  Those things may have bothered me in a distant teenage life, but now?  Please!  I’m just thankful I still have hair after the number of times it’s been chewed, yanked, and caught in zippers.  No, when I say I feel like a mess it’s not on the outside.  It’s on the inside.

Anybody can take a hot shower, tidy the kitchen, and put on a bright smile.  But beneath the smile I often feel like a frazzled storm of unfinished tasks, thinly concealed irritations, throbbing inadequacy, and weary battles to believe God.  It’s as if my outside and inside are disconnected:

“Yes, sweetheart, Mommy’s listening.”  (Say my name one more time and I’ll slam my head in the dishwasher.)
“Can I get you more manicotti?”  (Good gravy, I’m going to be doing dishes til midnight.)
“We’re just waiting on God!”  (Who I’m beginning to fear is never going to show up.)

Of course there are those moments when the inside erupts onto the outside:
“For the love of all things sacred, give me some SPACE!”
“COOK IT YOURSELF!”
“I just don’t feel like God loves me!”  *sob, sob, sob, sob, sob

But for the most part I’m pretty talented when it comes to the outside.  I know how to put on a cute outfit, camouflage the mess, and get the job done.  And that’s what scares me.  Because unlike most people, Jesus has never been fooled, nor impressed by the outside.  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” He cries in Matthew 23:27.  “For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.”  How’s that for a metaphor?  So what do we do when our whitewashed exterior is as thin as a coat of nail polish and our interior is daily filling with decay?

Dear sister, we limp back to the cross.

The cross reminds us that life was not always this way.  That once, long ago, there was no outside/inside disconnect.  Once, all the joy and perfection we pretend to have on Facebook was truly felt in our souls.  Mankind was at peace with God, with one another, and with self.  Then sin entered the picture and just like that, all of creation broke.  Nature, animals, mankind–together we began to groan under the weight of our own brokenness  (Rom 8:22).  And nothing could remedy the problem.  Not outward appearances.  Not religious practices.  Not cute guys, or big homes, or double-stuffed Oreos.  Nothing, except the cross.  When Jesus died on the cross He absorbed the full weight of sin–the penalty, wrath, bondage, and brokenness.  And He rose victorious.  That single act has the power to obliterate the outside/inside disconnect.

As Tchividjian wrote, the cross reminds me that “Because Jesus was strong for me, I am free to be weak.  Because Jesus won for me, I am free to lose.  Because Jesus was someone, I am free to be no one.  Because Jesus was extraordinary, I am free to be ordinary.  Because Jesus succeeded for me, I am free to fail.”  You and I don’t have to pretend we’ve got it all together on the outside.  We need only draw near to Him by faith, and in His sufficiency find our rest.

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