I have no excuses to offer for being so remiss in posting this month other than that it's been hectic for me both at work where I am dealing with upcoming graduation issues and at home where my husband and I are finishing our basement and spent our entire 3 day weekend and the past two days painting the freshly laid dry wall. I have missed writing and realize that I should have tried harder to make time. I apologize.
A parent of one of my seniors who will be graduating this year has asked me to write something inspirational that she will add to a scrapbook she is making for her daughter. This family is Christian and her daughter and I have discussed issues of faith. I am honored that they are including me in this memory book for her. It is probably the most meaningful task that I have been asked to do outside of my normal duties and perhaps once I have finalized the message I will send to her I will share what I wrote on this site. For now I will say that I have worked with this girl about seeing who she is in Christ and basing her self-esteem on how the Lord sees her rather than on how she sees herself, and I think this is a topic all of us could stand to remember.
I read a devotional a few years ago that I recommended to my student called Who I am in Christ by Neil T. Anderson. In this book, Anderson lists many of the ways that the Bible describes the characteristics that all of us can share once we give our lives to Christ. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is searching for self-definition and self-esteem as I was 11 years ago when I was, like my student, on the verge of adulthood but still feeling like a child and trying to figure out who I am and where I fit into the grander plan.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible that describes who we are in Christ is Romans 8:37, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." Merriam-Webster defines the word conquer using some of the following phrases: "to gain mastery over," "win by overcoming obstacles or opposition," and "to overcome by mental or moral power." These are all very significant phrases when considered in light of our Christian walks
We have a very real enemy who tries to work against God by working against us on our walks. Just as Romans 8:31-39 describes, our enemy whispers words of condemnation in our ears and tries to veer us off-course during our hardships. He lies to us about who God is and he lies to us about who we are as God's children. But Romans 8 is clear, we have the power to conquer--to gain mastery rather than to be mastered by--our enemy. Through Christ we can overcome every obstacle and opposition the enemy tries to throw at our feet. By staying focused on the Lord, we can keep ourselves from being distracted by the enemy's ploys and we can find victory (1 Corinthians 15:57, 1 John 5:4).
Christ won our victory for us on the cross and we are called to walk in that victory rather than in bondage to our enemy (see Romans 6). In practice, this means daily putting on our spiritual armor (Ephesians 6:10-18) to walk out onto the battlefield. For even though we already have victory, we still need to fight. Because the battle often begins in our minds where we give the enemy's lies ground to land on, we must "overcome by mental power" by taking every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). We must stand firm in our faith and in the truth giving ourselves to the Lord's work even when our enemy tries to block our efforts (1 Corinthians 15:58). The enemy has waged war on us, but through Christ we daily conquer our enemy.
I admit that American Idol has been a guilty pleasure for me this year. I don't vote, but I do get excited to see the results shows. I know it's silly, but I deal with real issues all day at work, and I like to have a brief escape to look forward to a couple times a week. Last night, I was quite disappointed to see Melinda Doolittle get booted from the show. In addition to having the best singing voice this season, Melinda is also an outspoken Christian woman, and for this reason even more than her vocal talent, I was pulling for her to succeed. Last night when she got voted off, two things occured to me. First, she is probably better off not winning because now she can make whatever type of album she chooses to make instead of being forced into some cookie cutter pop album mode. I'd love to see her make a gospel album because I think it would be brilliant. Second, the grace with which she handled what had to be disappointing news to her blew me away. She smiled, didn't shed a single tear, and graciously applauded the two whom the public selected. Her absolute peace with her circumstances set a beautiful example of how Christians should live before the world. After months and months of hard work, her efforts came to an end and this had to be a let down for her. Yet she stood in front of the camera and her actions said not my will, but God's will be done. Knowing how self-absorbed I can be, I was actually moved to tears by Melinda's faith. Like her, I know that God's plan is better than my own, but when I've poured so much of myself into something with the hopes of a specific outcome, I often have a hard time smiling graciously. As I watched her and felt my own emotion welling up, God convicted me again that grace like Melinda displayed is God's call on the lives of all mature Christians. He wants to bring me to a place of such rest in Him where I can face the entire roller coaster of life with a heart of total surrender and peace--maybe not always with a smile, but always with the grace that is a natural offshoot of yielding to higher plan than my own, of dying to myself and living in Him.
Today I stumbled across a discussion board on "real beauty" where a woman wrote that she cannot think of one attractive feature about herself. She painted a brief physical picture of herself (which sounded frighteningly similar to the way I look--short, fair skin, freckles) and then described how she would prefer to look--tall, tan, larger bust--not surprisingly very much the way Hollywood would also prefer that she and every other American woman look. As I was reading her brief post, I first felt empathy for her knowing that I used to feel the same way about my appearance and admittedly still do on occasion. I then felt my heart fill with praise at how God has brought me to a place where I can see beauty in even the parts of myself that I once thought were irrevocably flawed--my short but powerful legs, my freckled face that reflects my love of the outdoors, my wide feet that faithfully carry my body and my burdens. I praise God for this because it took a good chunk of my teens and twenties to get to a point where I am no longer incessantly raging against the genetics God gave to me. After praising Him, I then felt indignation at the enemy for the plight of the woman who posted the comments about her body and all my sisters who struggle against this attack of the enemy.
How much time and money and energy do women in this culture waste on trying to reach an unreachable standard of appearance? The multi-billion dollar diet and beauty industry daily send us the enemy's message that we are not good enough, that our worth can be measured on a bathroom scale, that our physical is more important than our spiritual. The industry does so under the guise that they are trying to meet our needs and desires, but really they are creating artificial needs and desires through their advertising. And so many of us gladly buy in. We overstuff our bodies until we are completely hidden behind layers of fat or we starve our bodies until the emptiness in our eyes barely hints at the life than once lurked behind them. The enemy is crushing out the fire in the hearts of women with his war on our beauty. He is instilling in us at young ages that it's better to reflect the airbrushed, plastic beauty of Hollywood than the real beauty of our Lord. The God who created us deeply values diversity in all ways, including physical appearance. Our enemy would prefer for us to reject God's creation and seek to become clones because he knows full well that our efforts to measure up to the impossible image of beauty that our culture has adopted will only drive us further away from God. Obsessive diet and beauty efforts draw our time away from the Lord's service, and they also sap our energy and strength and even our passion away from Him to whom all of these things should be directed. Do not be mistaken, Satan claps his hands with glee as he watches us expend ourselves on ourselves rather than on the Lord.
I mourn for all the years of my life I've wasted on the pursuit of the world's beauty. Frankly, the time has left me exhausted. During therapy in college, I read in a book about body image that we should only engage in exercise that brings us life--not punishment, not compulsion, not pain, but life. These words stuck with me even though I never really learned how to practice them. The problems I have now with my knee can be directly linked to the hours I have spent punishing myself with intense cardio after I ate the "wrong" thing. The pain in my knee reminds me daily of the price I paid to my enemy in hopes of fitting a certain physical mold. My heart grieves over this in my own life just as my heart grieves at the pain that all my sisters feel after giving themselves over to a greedy enemy who never satisfies. My prayer is that we might all recognize the pure beauty God has instilled in each of us, that we might start to appreciate our own unique beauty and the unique beauty of our sisters, that we might spend our time cultivating God's beauty in our hearts rather than the world's beauty on our bodies, and that we might spur each other on towards victory over an enemy whom our culture has given far too much power to in this (and every) area.
Now that I'm in a larger house and have more space, my mom has been slowly dropping off boxes of my stuff that had been sitting in the attic at her house. As I was going through one box from college, I came across some index cards on which I had written some inspiring quotations as part of my counseling. On one of these cards I wrote, "The richness and quality of our lives depends not on pain or the lack of it, but on how we use it." I didn't write down where I got this quote from, but when I read these words again this week years after I first wrote it on the card, I was struck again by the statement's truth.
We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. --Romans 5:3-5
When we are faced with pain we have three choices: we can let the pain break us, we can squelch the pain and have it resurface later in an even worse way, or we can turn the pain over to God and let Him use it to change us. As humans, I think our natural tendency is to try to avoid pain and suffering because it's easier to hide from pain than to face it head on. But God has never called us to the easy path. Pain is an inherent part of living in a fallen world with fallen people. God calls us not to run from pain, but to change our perspective about the pain. If we see pain as bad, we will continue to run from it, but if we see pain as an opportunity for growth, we can learn to embrace it. When we walk through our pain with God, we cannot help but come out on the other side as stronger people. Pain can enrich our lives if we let it. Since we are going to have to face pain anyway, we are better off embracing it and learning from it so that our lives can be fuller and our faith can grow as we watch God turn our pain into something beautiful.
I have been thinking a lot about marriage lately. Perhaps this because one of my best friends recently got engaged, perhaps because another friend has a wedding coming up in two months, or perhaps because I'm still pretty new at marriage myself. I've been thinking a lot about God's plans for us in the romance and love and how quickly so many of us in our single lives have dismissed God's plans in favor of our own agenda. For myself, I know that pre-John, I was quick to buy into the Hollywood idea of marriage as an end rather than a beginning. In fact, in much of my dating life before John, I would look at a guy and wonder immediately if he was "the one" and if we would live happily ever after. Immediately. Looking back now, I realize how naive I was, how duped I was by society's ideas of romance. Our culture encourages us to become too close too quickly, and I certainly adhered to this pattern in many ways. When I reflect on the times my heart has been broken, I realize I was hurt because I was chasing after and clinging to less than God's best for me. I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it and I didn't want to listen to God telling me to wait. I have seen so many of my sisters in Christ fall victim to this same mentality. But when we come to the other side, as I have also been blessed to see many of my sisters do, we discover that all along God really has known what He was doing. He didn't forget about us or ignore our prayers, He was just waiting for us to get to the place where we could be truly ready for His answer.
By the time I met John, I had been so burned by my own foolish decisions that I was ready to surrender to God. For the first time in my life, I let myself be courted without trying to rush or force things into place. I let a man pursue my heart and I found God's love for me in my surrender. Sometimes I wish I had trusted Him more completely earlier on with this area of my life. I would certainly have saved myself a lot of tears if I had. Other times I think that God knows how bull-headed I am and that all the while that I was getting hurt, He was waiting patiently for me to get tired of trying to do things my own way. If I have children, the virture I would pray for them to acquire earlier than I did would be patience, to write in their hearts Psalm 27:14, "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." I know how difficult it is to be patient in matters of the heart, but I have also learned what a blessing it is to trust Him for His best in this area. God brought me to a place where marriage became an honest and true expression of my love for another person and for God, a wonderful landmark in my journey rather than a culmination to my journey. He brought me to a place where marriage became a means to better glorify Him rather than to satisfy my worldly wants. We live in a world that unreasonably glorifies male-female relationships and usually cuts God out of the picture entirely. My heart breaks when I watch some of my students falling into the same mental traps that I fell into when I was younger because I know they are setting themselves up for pain. God has a simpler way, which we discover by patiently and faithfully waiting on Him. Society complicates matters of the heart, but John and I stand together as a living testimony that God is faithful even when it takes us awhile to trust Him instead of the world.
One final note for today, people often want to put a timeline on human relationships, forgetting that God exists and often works outside of our time. When we are involved in a romantic relationship, we sometimes want to speed up the process. When we are watching those we care about in a relationship, we sometimes want to slow the process down. In both cases our intentions are may be good, but we have to remember that God's timing may not look like ours. Trust in Him and know that as humans we are often wrong when we draw conclusions beacuse we don't see the whole picture that God sees. Part of faith is allowing God to move in spite our limited understanding. We need to be patient in trusting Him just as He is patient with our ignorance as we watch His plan unfold.