Bigger requests

Yesterday my pastor prayed "for our singles, that they may resist the temptation to self-pity and covetousness," and of course the first thing I did was start to feel sorry for myself, and I had to pray really hard about refocusing and not being mad at this obviously legitimate prayer request. (Somehow nothing shakes my contentment like being reminded that some people think I'm not content, which in itself is a point to ponder.)

I've been thinking about this issue today, and I don't think prayers that single people wouldn't be self-pitying go far enough. We are worse off than married people think (and vice versa, I'm sure). There are certainly times when I am self-pitying, except by a flaky word like "self-pitying" I really mean "ragingly jealous of 'wanted' people and bitterly angry at people who 'don't want' me." This is idolatry. This is substituting people for God. And this is not something that marriage would fix.

Saying "don't be self-pitying or covetous" has its place, absolutely. But I want to go further than that. I want to hear the "because" statement. "May they not be self-pitying because God loves them like He loves His Son. May they not be covetous because He has promised to be a husband to the unloved (Isaiah 54). May they not be playing in mud puddles because someone is offering a trip to the seashore. May they cherish every trial because through these fires they will come forth as gold."

Do I want contentment? Absolutely. Always. In whatever circumstance. Even if that means that someday somebody rocks my safe little world and I am called into something other than the familiar single life. And I also want wisdom, and I want clarity, and I want so many, many things I feel the lack of now.

I'm often the first person in line for the self-pity train, no matter where it's going or why. Thank God He's bigger than my self-pity, and my covetousness, and my personal temptations, and my righteousness, and my knowledge, and my love, and my everything.

And thank God that truth doesn't change if you're married.

"...but on the other hand, he was a dateless loser."

Tonight I went to see The Government Inspector at Calvin. There was a lobby display about the author, Nikolai Gogol. It talked about the inspirations for the play, and about his other works, and how they got more and more cynical, and that "there is no record of him ever having a lover of any kind," and...wait a minute. 

How does that relate? Is that supposed to explain the increasing cynicism? Is that supposed to undermine his creative efforts? 

I'm just saying. As an aspiring playwright with no past or potential lovers of any kind myself, it caught my attention.

Just Enough

Having fallen well on the bad side of the authorities, what with eliminating the queen's favorites and foretelling a three-year drought, the prophet Elijah went into hiding. He stayed by the side of a brook that God had sent him to, drinking the water from it and eating what food ravens brought him. I doubt they were bringing banquets, but he had enough. 

The brook dried up (drought, remember?), and Elijah was sent to a town called Zarephath to be fed by a widow who lived there. When he arrived, the widow had only sufficient food for a last meal. He asks for her to feed him first, and he gives her God's promise: "The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land." And it isn't used up, and it doesn't run dry.

You know what else doesn't happen, or else not that we read about? The jar doesn't fill, nor does the jug. The widow isn't able to buy vegetables, let alone a luxury item like meat. From the information we have, it seems as though every day there is enough...and just enough.

It's a hard way to live, day to day, reminding yourself of the promise every morning. Targeted remembering is not an easy thing. I wonder if there were days the widow doubted, days she thought, "This could be the last bit of flour for real this time." Even if she ever did doubt, it wouldn't have made a difference in what happened. Because He promised.

I have been thinking about this story a lot in the past few days. I have never been near starvation, but I have been at the edge in many ways (small or not), and there has always been enough of whatever it was I needed.

I want to go to that jar of flour and jug of oil with confidence. I've never once found them empty.

More

This past year God has been giving me wisdom, and patience, and love, and brokenness, and uncertainty.

And I, who won't beg for anything, am begging for this now: more.

More wisdom. More patience. More love. More uncertainty about self, others, and situations if it means more certainty about Him. More brokenness if it means more realization that only He can fix me.

More of everything towards the goal of completion, of fighting the good fight, of keeping the faith.

More cracks in this clay jar self so that God's glory shines through the stronger.

More confidence. More expectation.

Beyond all I could ask or imagine.

More.

Nobody

This Friday is the youth group banquet. It's my theatrical event of the year. This particular year we are doing a madrigal dinner, and there are way more leaders involved than there have been in the past. It's nice not to be the only one who cares how the show runs. 

Tonight as one of our actors was on his way out, the lead director said, "We love you. You're indispensable."

"You're not," I said. "We could do this without you. But don't make us do it."

I was told you can't do that, that you have to stroke people's egos, that actors are touchy, especially teenage actors, blahblahblahblah.

And I split into two personas. 

One said, Welcome to life, kids. Nobody is lost without you. That isn't easy to deal with, and I haven't figured out what it means yet, but it's true. People die, and you feel empty and keep going. People close to you get divorced, and your heart splinters and you keep going. People leave you in a thousand ways, with or without trying, and you want to scream and you want to quit and you keep going. You can live, technically speaking, without anybody, and anybody can live without you.

One said, Nobody bothers stroking my ego. What about me? Doesn't anybody care about my needs?

(Sometimes I get tired of having as many layers as an onion.)

Maybe when Jesus says that people shouldn't swear by heaven or by earth, but should stick with yes and no and meaning them both (James 5:12), that extends to committing yourself to anything. Maybe we should take people at their word when they say "I appreciate you," or "I liked the way you delivered that line," or "I enjoy spending time with you," and not push past that to idolatry, assuming they didn't appreciate/like/enjoy enough or assuming that we have to flatter them in order to keep them happy.

I'm trying to learn to submit myself to Christ and finding there is an awful lot of me in the way. Nobody can fix that except for Him, so I know I'm coming to the right place.

And to all of the people in my life I could do without.... I could do without my legs and my arms, too. But I'd rather not.

Lies I've told myself on Valentine's Day

Next Saturday is Valentine's Day. I don't know how it is for everybody else, but for me every February is a screaming reminder of romantic relational status and of cultural pressure. I have been very whiny about this in the past. I have written anti-Valentine's Day manifestos. I'm still not a fan of Valentine's Day. I could list my reasons why, and every year those years clarify a little more, but I fear that they often come across as sour grapes, even though every year the reasons become less emotional. (One of the annoying things about not being married is that few people seem to believe you at the times when you're okay with that...apparently contentment with where God has placed you is not for unmarried people.)

I have never had a date on Valentine's Day. Or around Valentine's Day. Or ever. I realized this year that I have often hidden that fact, pretended I had my share of that sort of experience, and I started wondering why. I think it's because I bought into a lot of lies about that sort of thing. Here are a few of them.

Lie #1: There must be something wrong with me.

• A lot of women I know, even the unmarried ones, have a string of stories about dates they've been on and men chasing after them. I don't. There's a selfish part of me that sometimes wishes I did, but it's overridden by the part of me that hates the thought of messing around with somebody else's heart. I've had enough grief over unrequited romances myself--I don't want to inflict that on anyone else. So from that perspective, maybe it's not something wrong with me that has kept the men from beating my door down, maybe it's something right.
• 
  
• Anyway, if I have to change in order to attract a man, then it isn't really me attracting a man, it's me misleading a man. Not fair to either of us. The best and most lasting changes are inspired by love that exists without needing the changes. 
  
• 
  
• "I know you love me just the way I am / So I'll change my ways if I think I can" -- Michelle Tumes

Lie #2: Maybe I should be doing something differently.

• This has led me into being too aggressive sometimes. Few people but me could identify when this line had been crossed, but suffice it to say that there comes a point at which I feel that if something were to happen romantically it would be because of my pursuing the man instead of the other way around. Thank God nobody has actually fallen for me in those situations, because I wouldn't have respected him. (I believe that submission as the church submits to Christ implies pursuit as Christ pursues the church.)
• 
  
• This lie feeds into my impatient Sarah heart, the "take matters into my own hands" mentality. (There is a time for taking matters into your own hands. I think a good test of whether or not it's the wrong time is to examine your heart to see how much impatience is seething there.) And I'm not the only one who falls into this mode of living. Someone I know recently entered into a serious romantic relationship. When asked if it was worth waiting for, she said yes, it was. But she wished she had waited more patiently, and not created so many Ishmaels along the way. I like the way she put that. I want to leave my Ishmael count where it is now.

Lie #3: Given enough time, I could drive anybody away.

• I have experienced enough friendships with people I was actively vicious towards to know that when it's meant to be, it's meant to be. True, many of those people have now moved on to the outskirts of my life (how very Nanny McPhee--"As long as you need me but don't want me, I will stay. When you want me but don't need me, then I will leave"--and yes, I did just reference that movie). But they remain good examples of this truth: what God is bringing together, no power on earth can hinder.

Lie #4: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who hasn't dated a bazillion other women before drop significantly.

• As a famous pilot once said, "Never tell me the odds." It's weird, but for somebody who dislikes math as much as I do, I try to turn life into statistics a lot. That is a denial of my stated belief that God holds my future in His hands and knows what He has planned for me. My life is not governed by chance or odds. 
• 
  
• There's also the fact that my dream of meeting a man who has been waiting his whole life for someone just like me could prove to be like my friend Sabrina's similar dream of becoming the first-time wife of a long-time Christian around her own age. Then she met Andrew, a divorced man who had become a Christian a few years previously and who is several years older than she is. And they are beautiful together. God's plans for us are better than what we could ever dream up for ourselves.

Lie #5: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who is actually interested in me personally and not just desperately searching for a wife drop significantly.

• See #4a. 
• 
  
• You may have noticed the C.S. Lewis quote I have on this site: "The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself." I want people to take me as I am, and the fact that I am a woman is part of that, but by no means all of it.
• 
  
• As for what's wrong with searching for a wife? Maybe nothing. I just have a pretty big ego and I want somebody to be searching for me. Maybe that doesn't actually happen. Probably not. Probably it could start out "I need a woman...any woman" and turn into "it is you I have loved all along." Also, come to think of it, I've always been more Beauty and the Beast than The Little Mermaid.
  

Lie #6: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who hasn't been badgered into meeting me drop significantly.

• See #4a.
• 
  
• I don't like the idea of being set up. First, let's think of other connotations of the phrase "set up." If that isn't enough to bring you to my way of thinking, which it probably isn't for some of you, here's the main thing I don't like about it: to me, it reinforces so many of the other lies swimming about in my increasingly conscious mind. 

I have never been on one single date. And I am more than okay with that. I am more than okay with how much God has taught me over the past several years about my twisted expectations, how much He has revealed of my heart (which is much more confusing than I used to think it was), how much He has shown me His sufficiency, how much He has changed my priorities, how many times He has let my heart break and has re-formed it to look more like His.

This year I will not be moping on Valentine's Day. 

Further up and further in.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

The current economic news has not been good. I mention this in case you have been in a cave. On Mars. With your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears.

I don't know about you, but I am a fan of the doomsday scenario. This is when you imagine a worst-case situation and how you would react to it. (I witness a lot of funerals in this way.) Naturally, today's economy fits nicely into gloomy imaginings. 

What would I do, I've wondered, if I lost my job? Who would pay me to do any of the things I can do, in any arena of my life? And why? Turns out that I imagine I'm mostly pretty useless. Yeah, in part I do that so I can have the pleasure of there-there-ing myself (a despicable habit) about how many people really like me and appreciate whatever it is I do and want me around, etc., etc., how much food does this giant ego actually need and when will it just shrivel up and die already.... But in part I do it because I don't understand economics and therefore don't understand exactly why we pay people to do what they do in the first place. How did that all get started? 

If I lost my job, where would I go? I'm already quite good at saving money, although I'm wasting a lot by living alone and not splitting bills. (I'm also a fan of imagining a commune in which I didn't explode at one or more of my fellow commune-ists within the space of six months. Or, you know, days. Ah, a girl can dream.)

I imagine myself sort of like Renee Zellweger in Cinderella Man, living in squalor and barely making rent until my Russell Crowe started turning things around and winning a few for the Gipper. But then, there is no Russell Crowe figure in my current situation, so that wouldn't actually work.

I imagine me living with various friends and feeling super awkward about it all the time because I have a pathological desire to be self-sufficient and independent and who needs parents, brothers, sisters, friends to help? Not I!

Mostly I imagine moving back to live with my parents. I feel like my world has been shaking a lot over the past year and I'm starting to feel queasy. My parents seem to be just about the only people I have whose relationships with me can't be affected by moving or marriage or anything in between. (It's probably not true. But it feels true.)

Sometimes life makes me tired.

Axes

I see them all

like a face in a corner of mirrors

an endlessly repeating line

no end in sight

it's the sameness that cripples me

keeps me frozen

waiting

until the next falls and

the next and the

next

I've tried pulling but

these don't come out

except perhaps by prayer and fasting

never a first resort but perhaps

the one I'm being driven towards

all this time

25 Things

I did this in my Facebook notes and am republishing it on my blog for lack of another post just yet. (Still debating the wisdom of publishing a post or two.)

1. The original version asked you to tag 25 people, but I only tagged back the people who tagged me first. Because I didn't know which 25 people in my friends list would appreciate being tagged with such a note, and thus being expected both to read it and to pass it on. [And/or because I don't like being ignored/rejected and have ridiculously low thresholds for both.] Anyway, I'm not tagging anybody here for the same reason(s). 

2. I do, however, love talking about myself.

3. Seriously, if you think I talk too much about myself, you should know how much I hold back.

4. I once told a guy I had a crush on that I wanted somebody in my life who'd be the type to echo this sentiment from IQ: "No, you're not babbling. If I had a mind like yours, I'd never stop talking." 

5. This guy later, in a different conversation, told me I wasn't babbling. Way to humor me, nice person. [Before we blog-fight on this, Trudy, no, I did not think he was serious. I do not ever assume anybody is serious in this sort of situation.]

6. I have since decided that feeding somebody pick-up lines is a waste of my energy...I'd rather give the lines to a character I'm writing. They're more believable then. 

7. I have experimented with several writing forms and have spent the most time in writing poetry, fanfiction, and (surprise) blog posts.

8. Writing helps me to understand what I'm thinking. It's like thinking out loud.

9. I think out loud. Talking to myself, talking to somebody else, talking to myself in the presence of somebody else....

10. Sometimes I get really muttery and nobody can understand me. Often I don't care because I wasn't saying anything important in mutter-mode.

11. Sometimes after I've walked away from a lengthy thinking-out-loud conversation my thoughts get sorted out and I want to go back for a do-over.

12. I wonder sometimes how many people have formed lasting opinions of me (or of my opinions of them) based on a half-formed thought that I've uttered out loud.

13. I try to remember #12 when I hear somebody say something I think is ridiculous or offensive or whatever, and not to take what they're saying at face value. 

14. I love follow-up questions.

15. For someone who spends so much time writing about observations and working to make characters seem real, I am astonishingly clueless in real life. I would estimate that I score about 15% on women's intuition, but then I'm not stellar at math, and estimating involves math.

16. I love quotes. I have quotes for every situation. 

17. I have a "did you ever see that episode of..." for just about every situation, too.

18. I used to agonize as a young girl over how on earth I would manage to change my name when I got married when I loved my last name so much. This has not yet become an issue.

19. I am no longer opposed to the possibility of remaining Winter forever, no matter what happens (don't flip, family members).

20. If I had to choose right now between two potential futures--supporting myself on my writing or getting married and having children--I would choose writing. This is hard to explain to such people as my mom.

21. Nobody worth marrying would actually make me choose between him and writing.

22. I want to write two full-length plays this year, publish one or both of my children's books, maybe get some poetry out there....

23. Part of this is because I will be turning 30 this year and it's like a race to feel like I've accomplished something.

24. I used to think I was spontaneous and flexible and easy to understand. Apparently, based on accumulated life experience and the comments of others...not so much. I have since found that most other people (especially guys) think that they are the ones who are easy to understand, but often this is not universally true, either.

25. I don't even have me figured out and some of the parts I do have figured out are pretty rough around the edges. It is good to know that God knows me and loves me, and it's somehow even more humbling to me that so many people care about me, too.