New Assignments

Our mistake, I've heard, is thinking life is meant to be a cruise ship. We set our deck chairs up and try to enjoy the view, but our casual chatting with friends about what we're having for dinner later keeps getting interrupted by loud rumblings and the sound of running feet. It's going to get more and more annoying, sitting there, but there is another option. We can stand up, turn around, and deal with the reality that the cruiser we're on is a battle cruiser; that we're crew members, not tourists; that we have bigger missions than relaxation.

Today I waved goodbye to a vehicle carrying a large chunk of my heart off towards Missouri. Last December my friend Eric was laid off from his job, and he finally got a new job out of state in August. For a few weeks now he's been coming up to Michigan every other weekend to visit his family--Jen and their two kids, Lucas and Katie. They haven't lived like a family in too long, and now they get to do that again. Just further away than before.

Jen is one of my sister-friends. We've shared a lot of life together, especially over this past year, when I was unemployed and would go visit several times a week. (It was a great time to be laid off. I can't think of a better year for that.) I know that this separation is harder because of the amount of time we spent together, but that makes it a good thing. As those of us left on the sidewalk when the car pulled away said, it would be worse if none of us were sad. What a waste of a couple of years it would have been, hanging out with people we wouldn't miss when they were gone.

I'm selfish about these things. I will miss being one of the favorite people in my little friend Lucas' life. I will miss not getting to see some of his sister Katie's first steps (or the very first ones). I will miss hours sitting on right-angled couches talking to Jen. I will miss watching Eric and Lucas throw grapes at each other in the back yard. All that stuff and more.

But the thing is, we're not tourists, they and I. We have a mission that extends beyond what we know, and the commanding officer reassigns as he sees fit. There will be people they need to meet in Missouri, and people who need to meet them. There are lives that haven't crossed yet that will become important to each other in ways we can't foresee. We'll still cross paths ourselves, and then someday our missions will all be completed and we'll be able to compare notes on how our little campaigns affected the broader field.

Part of my heart is with them, but it's only part of my heart, and the rest of me is still here. But all of God is with them, just like all of God is with me, just like all of God is with all of His people. And He loves them more than I do, which means an awful, awful lot.

Take care of my family for me, God. May we fulfill our duties honorably. Here, there, and wherever we go, may it be for and with you.

"I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

~~ Matthew 28:20b

Things I Say to You

Last week in Sunday School prayer request time a boy asked for prayer for his grandfather. "That's always your prayer request," another boy said, and I told him that sometimes we have prayers that we pray for a long time and it's okay, that God doesn't get sick of us.

Lots of times I find that when I'm explaining something about life to kids, I'm talking to myself, too. This is something I've been thinking about lately, this idea that my prayers are repetitive and God is maybe looking for something fresh and different from me.

Doesn't God get tired of it, I thought, me coming and asking Him for things, and so often the same things? "God, please give me patience. God, please redirect my heart. God, I'm sad today, I need comforting." Give, give, give, please, please, please, God.

And then I thought about my little buddy Lucas. He's three, and his vocabulary is expanding but still small. I hear a lot of the same things from him: "Zanne, watch racecars! Zanne, play with me! Zanne, come on!"

Do you know what I hear in that? "I want you to be with me, because I love you." That never gets old. I never get sick of it. I never want anything fresher than and different from it. Do you know why he asks me in the first place? Because I have made myself available for the asking, because I've welcomed it.

I'm going to keep coming, God, and I'm going to ask You a lot of the same things and tell you a lot of the same things, because You have made Yourself available and welcomed my words.

I want You to be with me, because I love You, because You loved me first.

Sarah & I

Sarah had at least heard the promises secondhand: a son, a future. Even secondhand promises were confusing, and she found herself second-guessing, coming up with a good plan that was a little bit self-sacrificial, foregoing her most cherished dream because that couldn't have really been what God wanted for her.

Do you know how long it took Sarah to panic and start working her own plans? At least ten years. Ten. Years.

It took me about three months to start panicking about my job.

Sure, you could say I haven't heard any divine promises, secondhand or otherwise, that the school attendance auditors won't come crashing down on us with the force of a mythological Fury; that all my preparations will bring us into complete compliance; that everything I love about this job won't be taken away because we don't get funding; that I won't be laid off before Thanksgiving.

But it's been three months. At most. Really, it's only been about a month and a half that I've known I'd be good at this, really good at it, and that I'd enjoy the job more than any job I've ever had. And look at me now, paying attention to the little voice whispering in my ear, "You knew it was too good to be true" and "You've got to start looking out for yourself."

Three months. That's ridiculous. I refuse to collapse in terror over this at three months, refuse to lash out at others for not doing their part to keep me employed, refuse to hate the auditors even if they reportedly hate me before we've even met, refuse to let go until I'm blessed. Again. And again.

I want to break the ten year mark on busting out my plans to save myself.

"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me;
You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies,
And Your right hand will save me.
The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting;
Do not forsake the works of Your hands."
~~ Psalm 138:7-8

Conversations about husbands

The conversation often turns to husbands, being a subject of daily living for many and a point of curiosity for the rest of us. Stories are told and re-told of hesitant forays into interest and first dates, of engagements and weddings. We talk about in-laws and other tricky ground; of the having of children and the yearning for children; of the multiplication and division of problems. Some say their husbands were their first ever experience of mutual attraction; some that in certain ways their husbands surprised them, upsetting what they thought they wanted (“He just kept coming, and coming….” “He said ‘no’ to me and it was so attractive.”).

They are still fairly new to this, these wives, still nowhere near my mother’s thirty-three years, but they are fully committed to the vows they made to God and their husbands, and they are learning, and they are growing (so is their love). It draws me, pulls me to want to be part of that conversation in another way, and I leave feeling joyful because I have seen the Spirit’s blessing on these friends.

I know now what I resisted for years, fearing as I so often do the idea of being like everyone else: I’m a romantic at heart—hopeful, not hopeless, because the best love stories here point to the best love story of all, the one I’m part of no matter what.

After a season in which I struggled with the notion that God probably wanted me to have a series of miserable jobs ended with a job I enjoy, I can’t hold on to the even more ludicrous idea that He is after sending me a man who bores me, who can’t keep up with me, who finds me ridiculous (in the negative sense), who doesn’t want me as much as I want him, who makes the whole endeavor feel like a duty to slog through. It’s a notion that reminds me of my brother, once as relationally ascetic as I have been, pleasantly surprised and amazed to discover even the silly little side things he could have seen himself foregoing in a wife were present in the woman who is now my sister.

I’ve found, after an honest appraisal of self and God, I’m not angry anymore when the topic of singleness comes up. Marriage would be an awfully big adventure. Then again, I’m in an awfully big adventure already. (In all circumstances, to be content.)