Category: Marriage & Womanhood

My dear twenties,
In seven days I will celebrate the start of my last year with you.  29.  My farewell year to a decade well spent.  I’ll have you know I’ve liked you a lot more than the teens.  You are the decade that got rid of acne, gave me a job that didn’t come with an apron, and taught me how to spread my wings and fly away from home.  You introduced me to love, turned me into a bride, and washed away the insecurities of adolescence with the affection of a man I never deserved.

You are the decade of burnt dinners, tiny apartments, and tender beginnings.  The decade that laid a little body into my arms and in one swift moment made me a mother for life.  Where adolescence taught me to be strong because I have not, you taught me to be strong because I have.  You tutored me with kindness instead of pain.  With blessings that made me ache to be better than I am.  No matter what the future brings, I will remember you as the decade that gave me the gifts that would come to define my life and my legacy.

My dear twenties, you have been merciful to me.  A decade of joy, lavish with grace.  I used to view you as the ticking-clock decade, the race-to-the-deadline decade…in which case I would have just one more year to run a marathon, write a novel, and finish having children!  But I know better now.  Your goal has never been for me to gather accomplishments and pin them to my chest before I’m thirty.  Because you are not the finish line, but the starting line.  If childhood and adolescence is the “ready” and “set,” you are the gunshot decade that gives us a swift kick in the pants and tells us to “Go!”  Take your life and your blessings, and live!  Put wings to your dreams, and courage to your feet, and don’t be so afraid to stumble along the way.  Thank you, dear twenties.  I look forward to one last year with you!

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For as long as I can remember, “imagination” has had a good rep.  And I have had a good supply of it.  As a kid I didn’t just “wrap Christmas presents”—I performed surgery on anxious patients with nothing but pink safety scissors and a roll of Scotch tape.  I didn’t “iron clothes” for my mother—I hosted a televised special on how to get wrinkles out of an Oxford.  Imagination, I quickly learned, was a great way to pass the time.  And the sorrow.

If I didn’t make the team, I imagined I was the star player.  If the cute boy didn’t like me, I imagined that he did.  And if the cute boy turned out to be a real jerk, well that was the beauty of imagination!  In five seconds flat I could turn him into the man of my dreams.  I always assumed I’d quit daydreaming once some of these dreams were actually realized.  After all, when I had the amazing job, and the exciting life, and the man of my dreams I wouldn’t need to daydream, right?

Unless I didn’t have those things.  Unless somewhere along the way I had created dreams so lofty no reality could compete with them.  No man fulfill them.  No set of circumstances live up to them.   I was probably in my twenties when I finally realized daydreaming could be dangerous.  That it could pave a fast track to discontentment.

I think a lot about it now as I raise two young girls—girls who have already fallen in love with the notion of princesses and fairytales.  On the one hand, I’m a major advocate for imagination.  If I were a fictitious character I’d be Anne of Green Gables, scarcely able to fathom the dreariness of a world without imagination.  But as a woman who’s a smidgen wiser than I used to be, I sidle up to it warily.  Imagine we’re in a fort cooking dinner out of pine cones?  I’m all about it!  Imagine we’re digging for dinosaur bones?  Let’s do it!  Imagine one day every fairy tale wish will come true and life will be perfect?  Don’t do it.  Oh, my sweet little girls, don’t do it.

Because the truth is, you and I were never made for the fairytale.  We weren’t made to live comfortable, easy lives that always make us feel good.  We were made to live one real life, with a real God, who offers real hope in a real and broken world.  My previous post has opened up a floodgate of real Moms sharing their real stories.  It has made me cry, and pray, and rejoice that I am not alone.  I am not journeying with Cinderella and Snow White.  I am journeying with real people—overcomers in Christ with real testimonies.  And I believe that’s exactly the way God intended it to be.  Shortly before leaving His disciples, Jesus warned them that suffering was coming.  He said He was preparing them for it so that in HIM they may have peace.  And then He made this promise: “In this world, you will have prince charming, perfect kids, great hair, loads of free time trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.”  (John 16:33)

The answer to the reality of pain—the reason we can stand up under it—has always been and always will be found in Jesus.  That’s the mistake I made so many years ago–when I didn’t make the team, when the cute boy didn’t like me.  I didn’t run to Jesus to remind me that my worth is securely kept in Him.  I didn’t let Jesus satisfy my longing to be known and loved.  Instead I crafted a really puny version of fulfillment and daydreamed about it.  And as soon as the daydream was over, so was the satisfaction.

If there’s one thing I’m realizing the more I blog, it’s that I don’t know your story.  I don’t know whether you love to daydream, or haven’t done it since you were five years old.  I don’t know if the life you’re living right now fills you with joy and peace, or if it leaves you empty and longing for more.  The only thing I know, with wholehearted certainty, is that Jesus is passionate about you.  He is passionate not only to rescue you (John 3:16; Romans 6:23), but to give you an abundant life in Him (John 10:10).  Don’t settle for the daydreams, the way I did for so long, foolishly believing they’re as good as it gets.  They are just a shadow of joy and fulfillment.  Jesus is the real thing.

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Do you ever feel like there’s a gigantic gap between the woman you are and the one you want to be?  I do.  The woman I want to be lives in my mind, somewhere between the endless to-do lists and the names of all the Sesame Street muppets.  She is innately patient.  Fearlessly radical.  She believes that God is faithful, even when it feels like He’s forgotten her.  She always chooses the better thing–to feed her soul instead of her flesh, to submit instead of defy, to rejoice instead of complain.  She never snaps at her children or nags her husband.

In fact, the only person she ever irritates is me.  She eludes me and haunts me at the same time.  She is the woman I think about five seconds after I say the thing I shouldn’t have said.   The woman I think about when my kids are in bed and I’m wishing I hadn’t been so impatient with them.  I think about her when I meet someone really sunny who never seems to doubt God.  And I think about her on the really cloudy days when I feel guilty for not climbing out of my own discouragement.

I used to think I could bridge the gap between her and me in one giant leap.  Maybe a Beth Moore conference?  A weekend prayer retreat?  But I never could make the leap.  At times I thought I had, and then inevitably I would disappoint myself.  Struggle with the same old sin.  Fail in the same old way.

Sometime this summer it finally clicked with me.  The journey from me to her is a small step journey.  It is not made up of grandiose conferences or life-altering experiences.  It is made up of millions upon millions of tiny moments.  Paul David Tripp taught me this when he wrote, “the character and quality of our life is forged in little moments.  We tend to back away from the significance of these little moments because they are little moments.  [But] these are the moments that make up our lives.”

In context, he was writing about all the little thoughts, words, and choices that shape a marriage and set the stage for the future.  But I am finding this “small-moment approach” is a great way to live all of life.  I have come to pray a very simple prayer throughout the day.  Whether I’m believing a lie, battling idols, or itching to erupt, in the heat of the moment all I pray is, “God, help me win this small-moment battle!”  That’s all I focus on.  I don’t think about overcoming every battle, or making a personal sanctification plan, or donning a cape and painting supermom across my forehead.  I just focus on the one small battle before me, and by God’s power with Christ’s help, I fight to win.  Then, ten minutes later, when the baby dumps a bowl of spaghetti onto my mother-in-law’s carpet, I pray, “God, help me win this small-moment battle!”  And so it goes.

You build a house one brick at a time, write a book one word at a time, and live a life one moment at a time.  You and I don’t have to become the Proverbs 31 woman tomorrow.  We just have to throw ourselves upon the grace and power of Christ to live faithfully today.  To make the wise choice.  To say the kind thing.  To reject the awful thought.  To repent and get back up again.  And one day we will look back and realize that over a lifetime–over a million small moments–God grew us.  

Mother Theresa, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther, Jessica Simpson–they all have one thing in common.  They became who they are one small moment at a time.  And so will we.

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From the time we’re young, society feeds us a steady diet of lies—find the right man and you’ll be satisfied, attain the right figure and you’ll be beautiful, wear the right clothes and you’ll be accepted.  So we try it, only to discover there’s still this quiet ache.

Like a boat without an anchor, our hearts drift restlessly on a constant quest for fulfillment.  And boy does the world have a lot of suggestions for where we might find fulfillment.  I’m not much of a magazine reader, but I recently picked up a magazine promising to divulge how Jennifer Hudson “lives it up at Christmas without putting on a pound.”  Inadvertently, I stumbled upon an article entitled “12 Things We Learned about Love in 2012.”  The list was nothing short of devastating, boosting the pornographic novel Fifty Shades of Grey and the male-strip-club movie Magic Mike.  Really?  These are the things we learned about love?  But the sad reality is yes, these are the tutors shaping the hearts and minds of countless women.

And it’s all counterfeit.  We desire intimacy, and we’re offered lust.  We long for significance, and we’re handed a J Crew catalogue.  We want a Hero, and the world suggests 007.  Speaking of heroes, the other night I watched The Bourne Legacy with my husband.  One particular scene had me especially hooked.  In it the female doctor is running from the police.  She escapes into a narrow alley, only to find a police officer on either side.  Meanwhile, her partner, the medically enhanced super-duper spy is also running from police on the rooftops.  Just as you think it’s all over for the doctor, her partner leaps from a roof, flies down this tight alley, and saves her.  Ridiculous, sure, but I loved it!  I always love that image of the mighty hero rescuing the girl.  I think a lot of women do.  You know why I think it appeals to us?  Because it’s a dim reflection of a true story.

The next morning, after watching the movie, we were singing at church when a particular line from the song struck me: “The King of Glory rescued me.”  Unbidden, the image from the movie flashed through my mind.  With it came the joyous thought—there really is a Hero!  The world may offer an array of counterfeits, but there is a real thing in existence.  There is a Hero who longs to be deeply intimate with you, who has the power to bestow true significance, and who makes the Hulk look like a girl scout.  He is the ultimate leader, stronger than any super-spy, and fiercer than any warrior.

Listen to the heroic imagery of Psalm 18, as David cries out to God for help.  With fire from His mouth and anger that makes the mountains tremble, God flies swiftly on the wings of the wind, His voice thundering like hailstones.  He battles with arrows and lightning, until the channels of the sea are seen and the foundations of the world laid bare at His rebuke.  And then David declares, “He sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters.  He rescued me from my strong enemy…for they were too mighty for me.”  Talk about a rescue!  Talk about a Hero.

Why do women wander?  Because our souls were made for this Hero, and nothing less can satisfy.  As a Christian, do I still feel the temptation to wander aimlessly?  Absolutely.  It’s why I’m writing.  But I take heart because I also know the truth.  That restless stirring in my heart is not the need for a new pair of skinny jeans, or a few more dates with my husband.  It is my soul’s soft reminder that I was made for Christ.  It is my Savior’s invitation to come and be satisfied.

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