Mini-Update

If I didn’t write down my prayers, I really wouldn’t remember for what I prayed—and I wouldn’t be able to sit back in awe at the glory of God.  But since I keep up with them...

The Beach—The ocean is one of the places I feel most at one with God.  I’d say that’s a true statement for almost anybody, just because of the largeness of the ocean and the smallness of us.  It’s difficult not to get caught up in the overwhelming beauty of the world that standing in the ocean water offers.  This past weekend was amazing, as always.  Walking on the ocean at night, under some stars, under the large, full moon, and seeing flecks of green glowing algae along the shore.  It really was amazing.  Monday morning I sat alone on the soft sand and just sang to God.  Those moments—the ones where life fades into the background and all I feel is God—are the moments to which I cling.

Unsaved Souls—One of my prayers is that God would bring more opportunities to talk about Him with other people.  Not just other Christians, but non-believers, too.  And that He would open the doors for honest conversations about lives and beliefs.  Like the pro He is, He has answered that prayer repeatedly especially within the last week, and I have had some very intentional, honest conversations with believers and non-believers alike.  I love each conversation.  I love hearing about how someone came to Christ—realizing the beauty in an otherwise ugly story.  And I love hearing non-believers talk about their stance and belief.  It hurts to know they don’t believe, but it’s familiar territory for me.  Not always a believer, it feels like familiar ground when they share their concerns, their struggles with religion and God—and I can be like, I thought that, too.  I love, love, love these moments and pray not just for many more, but the knowledge and understanding of His Word so that I might share more of that with anyone He places in my life.

My Job—is amazing and I love it.  I love it every day and every night and every day and every night and thank God literally every day for blessing me with this.  I take it day by day for what it is and have open hands, knowing that if He provided this for me, He will provide again if this job isn’t long term—but for right now, it seems like it will be, and my heart is bursting with joy.

Dating, Singleness, Marriage—Right now, in the present moment, I’m adjusting to where I’m at.  Comfortable not dating, not rushing, and trying to be open to love.  I want to give love another chance, but don’t want to rush anything.  There has been much talk about blind dates and setups all at once and while it’s intriguing, it’s also terrifying.  I never imagined that the man I married would be someone I’d met on a blind date—‘cause you know, every girl wants that guy who sees them from across the room and knows immediately that he’s meant for her and she’s meant for him.  Blind dates, while it seems more realistic, seem less passionate and romantic.  But whatever God wills.  God knows what I want in a husband and He knows what He wants in my husband—I just pray for discernment when the time comes and His hand to guide me.

Happy Birthday, Mom—Seven years of birthdays have passed where I haven't been able to give my mom a hug on her birthday.  Not to mention Thanksgivings.  Christmases...  It has been seven years since I've spent any holidays with my family and after a certain point, it does start to wear on you.  I love her very much and can't wait to hug her again.  My mom stopped aging at 35 to me.  She will always be my favorite lady, which is something I could not have said eight years ago.  God is amazing and powerful and loving.  And I'm so glad she's my mom and she's in my life.

Thank You, Lord, for Your answers to my prayers and the vision to see You in every moment.  You challenge me, You encourage me, You move me, and You put all the right people in my life at the right time, and take all the people out of my life when their seasons are over.  Thank You for new friendships, old friends, one-time talks, and Gospel opportunities.  I am so excited for every day!

Undecided

God called my bluff.  I think that’s exactly what yesterday was.

God said, “You’ve been talking about relationships for the last couple months—look!  Opportunity!  I’m giving you what you want!”

Hyperventilation wasn’t the reaction I expected from myself.

So, why, after God gave me just a little taste of what I thought I wanted, did I retract and run?

“You’re scared…” He said.  Yes, God, you’re right.  I’m scared—terrified!  Terrified to open myself up again.  Terrified of being hurt.

·       I don't know what real love looks like on this plane.  I've been in so many terrible, broken, stab-me-in-the-heart relationships.  What will it look like for a man to love me like Christ loved the church?  Is that even remotely possible?  Am I worth loving?

·       I know what hurt feels like.  Being in love is a promise to be hurt.  People aren't perfect.  We're sinners.  Hurt is inevitable.  Anyone I have ever given my heart to—besides God—has broken it.  They have smashed it into itty bitty pieces (that God had to lovingly stitch back together).  Why go through that again?

·       I know what it means to love. It means sacrifice.  It means investment.  It means time…money…energy.  An equation that has always eventually equaled abandonment.  It means to give and give and give yourself away, only to be left—because people always leave. 

What does love look like?  I pray that God would show me and open my heart to it.

What Do I Really Want?

It was the second time she mentioned it that my body locked up.

Blind date.

I scurried back to my desk, and hid.

The more time that passed, the less functional I became.

Blind date.  And not just a, "Hey, let me set you up with someone"—because there's freedom in that.  That means they don’t have anyone in mind—they’re just scouting.  No, this was a, "I have specific someone I want to set you up with, and I can do it as soon as next Tuesday"—they've already scoped out the scene and have someone intentionally in mind for me.  Intentional.  In-ten-tion-al.  That means it was done...with purpose...with a plan...with intent to be executed.

An hour later, when she said it a third time, I couldn't breathe.  When she walked away, I cupped my hands over my face, counting to ten.

This isn’t the reaction one would imagine from a girl who has seen 90% of her friends begin to date, become engaged, or tie the knot within the last three months.  You would think she’d be on board with finding love as soon as possible.  Hell, even I was confused.

Panicking.  I was literally panicking and my body was shutting down, because of the idea of a blind date.  Dramatic much?

As I left work, driving to meet a friend for dinner, the panic became even worse.  I tried to talk to God through my tears, but I just couldn’t reach Him through my anxiety.  I tried to breathe for a minute and forced my mind to dead air to pause my ricocheting neurotransmitters.  Why?  Why was I panicked?

Because you’ve had over a decade of failed love.

Because you were the one who majorly screwed up your last three relationships.

Because you can’t control yourself physically.

Because you tear men apart.

Because you want the benefits without the work.

Because you don’t want to invest.

…love terrifies you.

It has been easy to float around, never being pursued by men to only complain about not being pursued.  But what happens if I let her set me up?  What if I like this guy?  What if he likes me?  What if we work out?  What if he marries me?

Looking at my past relationships… What if he doesn’t love my sense of humor?  What if he hates my teeth?  What if he thinks I’m fat?  What if he hates my dogs?  What if he thinks I’m stupid?

Looking at my own selfishness…  What if I have to give up the lifestyle I have now?  What if I don’t want to share my life with God and a man?  What if I’m happiest having a solo relationship with God without a partner?  What if I criticize his leadership skills?  What if I make him fail because I can’t physically control myself?  What if I have to share a bed with someone?  A kitchen?  A bathroom?  A life?

I know that I’m taking a simple blind date and translating it into a path twenty years from now—you’re probably reading this, thinking, “Jamie—it’s just a small blind date that you haven’t even agreed to yet”—but having the first intentional and legitimate proposal since the beginning of the OYC, I’ve only now realized that being in a relationship terrifies me.  What if I’m second guessing the life I thought I wanted for me and I didn’t know it until the life I had was threatened?

Do I want to be married?

Do I really want to trade in the easy single life for sacrificial married life?

Can I really be unselfish?

My biggest fear is not having the strength to not repeat my past mistakes.

Am I ready to be tested?

I’m scared I’m not.

At the Table

Sitting alone at a restaurant causes a mind to wander.

I don’t know why it brought me to tweet this, but when I wrote it I was thinking of Jesus and his fellowship with those the world wouldn’t touch—just how it was that Jesus could walk between those of high regard and those of low regard (and no regard).  And not just how he walked, but how he sat with them.  Sitting is intentional.  You can’t mistake sitting.  Walking, you may just be headed in the same direction, passing by, experiencing just a moment together.  But sitting?  You plan intimacy, some quality time to be spent.

And it was about fifteen minutes after this thought, this tweet, that I was waiting alone at a table for six, and he asked if he could sit.  Not attracted to him, I inwardly sighed, and though I really didn’t have much say in the matter, I obliged, my hand raised, offering the seat across from me.

He was aged, maybe on the brink of forty.  My glee was nonexistent and disappointment great.  And every bad thought, every bad judgment I could surmise came to mind.

The Holy Spirit slapped his forehead and pushed my critical thoughts away with the image of what I had just tweeted, as if to say, “Then what was all this?”  Before the man had even said a word, I had checked out.  Mentally, I had not only risen from the table, I had run out the door.

Now, here is the thing, I am by no means urging any woman to indulge the desire for attention or opportunity in a man—especially if he’s very much your senior.  If you don’t hear God calling you to stay, don’t.  But do pay attention to your circumstances.  My situation was that a man was sitting across from me, but the circumstances of the situation were: I said something and God immediately tested me.

And sometimes you have that feeling—when in any other situation you’d be crazy to acquiesce, but I’d like to think I’ve learned by now when you have a chance to pass a test given by the hand of God—you try and pass it.

I heard God say, “You said you respect men who just walk up—well, this guy walked right up.  I put him at your table.  And because I put him at your table, you are safe.  Don’t assume anything.  Nothing is being asked of you.  Just sit, resist the urge to recoil, and lay down your judgments.”

So, I took a breath, and smiled the smile I smile at old friends.  I listened to him talk about the beach and vacation, and agreed that as we age it becomes more difficult to plan vacations with friends on the same schedule and different paydays.

Some minutes passed, and he rose from the table before my friends entered the restaurant.  He held out his hand and introduced himself and walked away.

I know God knows me, but in moments like this I feel like I am completely naked—that He can see right into my soul and into how ugly, superficial, and judgmental I can be.  Is the cost of me so great in having a conversation with someone?  We feel so spent in our daily jobs, from past or life experiences, that we can’t afford the small bit of patience it takes to connect with people outside our inner circles?  We ignore God’s call to love, because we presume love is a deep action, and we don’t have the energy for deep.  What we fail to realize is that love is as simple as a simple conversation.

How saddened I am by my own inability and desire to be in relationship with the world—that my space and my time feels threatened by the presence of another.  How encouraged I am that Jesus was not one to turn away.

Be challenged by God.  Be eager to be sanctified.  Be sad by what is lacked in character, but only enough so that it pushes you to be less like yourself and more like the God who yearns to reunite with His beloved child who fought like Hell to live like Jesus.

El Roi, the God Who Sees (What We Can't)

Short sentence, sharp upshot: God can't.

For the last year, and over the last month, I’ve been struggling with the picture of an incapable God—a picture that my heart developed inconspicuously over time, effecting my perspective on life, including thoughts of a career, and about friends, and about discipleship.

·   God can't give me a job I love, because it doesn’t exist.  People go to school for years for degrees in specialized things.  Big things.  I love the small things.  The insignificant things.  Ever been in a small group with me?  I love details.  Every minuscule task.  Every tiny detail.  My heart soars upon the exercise of completion, of configuration of the small things.  I love organization.  I love creativity.  But have no idea what platform would ever allow me to be everything I love—especially when I have no idea what I want to do.  Cooking?  No.  Nursing?  No.  Teaching?  No.  Law?  No.  Then what’s left?  There is no way God can structure a job that interweaves everything I love.  It’s too complicated.  He just can't.

·   God can't redeem this friendship, because it’s too broken.  She hurt my heart too much.  She doesn't care.  I was nothing.  She's nothing to me now.  There's no way we can recover.  We don't even care about recovering what we've lost.  It's too far gone.  It’s far too late.  There’s no going back.

·   God can't bring me a mentor, because my schedule is too hectic.  Because it’s been two years since my last mentor.  If He could have, He would have by now.  Plus I'm way too quirky for anyone to tolerate.  This is the south.  I'm from California.  I have a dirty past.  What seasoned, mature Christian woman can sit across from me at a table and not scowl at my life in judgment?  Who can love me for me?  Awkward humor, clumsiness, my idiosyncrasies?  There could never be someone here that would sit with me and not just tolerate me, but love me with her whole heart.

God can't.

God can't.

God can't.

Each time I've challenged God, I expected—I waited—I wanted an answer.  But I got nothing.  God was quiet.  And He remained quiet.  God may be a lion, but just because He is, doesn’t mean He wastes His breath on roaring at the prompting of His cubs.

And so I took His silence as agreement.  “You’re quiet, because You can’t.”

What I didn’t know was that God’s silence was just a way for Him to set the grandiose stage to give the gifts for which I longed, but had no faith that He would ever deliver.  Oh, how God is faithful even when we are faithless!

I sit here exactly one month and one day into an amazing job—career—that requires of me everything in which I excel.  Everything I thought meaningless—everything I thought worthless, He’s using it.  He’s letting me use it.  The God Who designed the universe, designed His daughter—what did He do?  In the very universe He constructed, for the very daughter He formed, He designed a position with the very intent of filling it with her.  It was nothing I ever imagined it would be, because I couldn’t even fathom how great it could be, and is.

That friendship I counted as lost?  He brought my friend—my sister, His daughter—back into my life and not only do I feel close to her, but I feel closer to her now than I did during the first season of our friendship.  I love her more now than I have ever.  There’s an excitement in seeing her, and an anticipation when we’re apart.  The friendship I thought far too gone to save, God did more than save it—He rebuilt it from the ground up into this beautiful home where deep love lives—the kind of love that is only born from the redemption of strife.  The kind of love that comes from mended wounds.

And the mentor I thought did not exist, because she could not exist?  I just came from having dinner with her.  What’s funny is that we’ve known each other for years.  We have seen each other, talked, and laughed, but because it wasn’t time yet, we were never given the opportunity to go deeper.  Until now.  Now is the right time.  This happened in His time.  His Hand personally opened the door, and she met me, arms open, smile wide, heart ready.

I sit here, overwhelmed.  In awe.  Grateful, and undeserving.  So damningly undeserving, because I let my can’t’s become bigger than my God.

God can’t.

God can’t.

God can’t.

Have you ever been part of a surprise party?

Has it ever been your birthday and you thought everyone forgot?  You’re miserable.  You want to go home and crawl under the covers and complain that your friends don’t love you, because if they did, they wouldn’t have forgotten?

And then you come home.  You don’t notice the cars hiding a block away.  And you overlook the pink streamers.

Then you walk through your front door, and—SURPRISE!—there’s your best friend—the mastermind—who carved out every detail to make you feel loved, not because you deserve it (Hell, you just spent the whole day moping), but because they love you so much?  

And then you feel like an idiot, because you wasted all that time moping?

Yeah, I feel like the moron who just sat around complaining about all the things I thought weren’t being done, but, really, they were, and I just couldn’t see it—because I wasn’t supposed to see it.

My truth is the lie that God can’t, and I let my truth reign over my life as if it were truer than His truth.

When the real truth is…

God can’t

God is bigger and more powerful than any word, any thought, any doubt.

And the good news is, if you’re at where I’m at, and you think God can’t—just wait.

He loves to prove people wrong.  He loves to love people.  (And He’s excellent at both.)