My Last First Day of School
This morning was bittersweet. This is my fourth year of seminary. I’ve officially spent more time in graduate school than I did in undergrad! Almost all of the students that Jeff and I started school with have graduated and are long gone. New faces have popped up, really young ones, and I notice a few small changes around. There is a new microwave, which is a huge improvement on the old one which took five minutes to warm a bowl of soup. There is a plant shelf in the woman’s bathroom, and a pump of Trader Joe’s lotion by the sink. I know, not a big deal but I notice these things. The biggest change in the school is not visible-they’ve gone from Multnomah Bible College and Seminary to Multnomah University. Doesn’t affect me that much. Tuition has gone from $407 a credit to $423 a credit (which does affect me, unfortunately).
For the most part though, nothing is new. I am pregnant, but I’ve done that before too. Two years ago I started a fall term pregnant as well. And this isn’t my first time as a seminary mom, we did that last year as well. I guess the one thing that’s significant is that this is my last first day of school…I think (more on that later). As I look around, waves of memories roll over me. The smells, the sights, the familiar voices. I have too many memories of throwing up in the bathrooms when morning sickness overtook me that first spring term. I remember hysterically crying in the stairwell when a traumatic family event took place. I remember first meeting my friend Liz, and awkwardly conversing about degrees and programs. I remember (and am beginning to even feel) laboring up the staircase 8 1/2 months pregnant, wondering how they they seemed to add more stairs every week. I remember the first day I went to school without Jeff, crying in my car trying to muster up the courage to go it along. I remember hundreds of trips driving to and from McMinnville. In many ways Multnomah University has become a second home to me. The professors are friends, mentors, spiritual parents. The students, though perhaps not many are close friends, are familiar, sharing the common goal of desiring to serve the Lord, and sharing the common struggle of work schedules, homework loads, obscene school loans, and family commitments.
But this Monday was my first last day of school. Strangely though, I don’t really want to be done. I’m not sure what lies ahead, but more on that later. Tonight I’m just reflecting on what an amazing place Multnomah has been for me. More than an education, it’s been a place of refuge, growth, challenge, safety. A place where I can risk, fail, hurt, be vulnerable, ask questions, doubt, challenge, and love. It’s been a place where I feel valued, invested in, and cared for. I could never ask for anything more than what Multnomah has been for me. So tonight I just say thanks, thanks to the professors, counselors, janitors, president, and people who have made Multnomah home for me. On my last first day of school I’m thankful.
The God Who Grieves
Today I’m out at Riversong (Mom & Dad’s), as our home is shown as an Open House today. It’s a sweet retreat, and we all agree that it’s way more fun now that we all don’t live together. 🙂 Really, in the best sense, it feels like a treat to be out in the boonies, Dutch is like a kid in a candy store playing with Oma and Papa, and Jeff and I are getting some much needed studying done.
So I’m studying for the retreat, and struck by the shortest verse in the Bible, one that I’ve always marveled at, but see again for the first time today. John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” Lazarus is dead. Mary and Martha have placed all their hope in Jesus to come heal Lazarus, and instead He wastes his time (it seems) and shows up 4 days too late and all hope is lost. Lazarus is dead. Now Jesus, who deliberately disappointed these women by delaying His arrival (more on this later), already knows that He will soon raise Lazarus from the dead. But what does He does first? Does he say, “Silly ladies! Can’t you just trust me? I’ll raise him up. Settle down and quit crying!” No. “He groaned in His spirit and was troubled.” And then: “Jesus wept.”
I have alread asserted that God deliberately disappoints us. But here is the remarkable truth: If we think that God is aloofly and distantly watching our pain from afar, we are tragically wrong. That is not the God we serve. The God we serve and love and worship chooses to experience every ounce of pain that we experience, with us. If you are hurting, God is hurting with you. God weeps with you. God has wept with me. He wept with them. He weeps with you. If God chooses to disappoint us, allow us to hurt, send us through the fire of tragedy and pain, He goes through it with us. He weeps with us. This is the God we serve. He is the God who grieves.
Nothing is Harder Than Doing Your Own Thing
This morning I had the luxury of sitting at Starbucks with a hot Tazo tea and my Bible. Jeff was with the Dutcher, out for a bike ride (Dutch in his little bike seat with his blue helmet is about the cutest thing in the world), and I had the rare luxury of quiet solitude. I read Proverbs 1-9, which is basically a series of contrasts between Wisdom and Folly, both personified as women. While wisdom is “life to those who find” it and gives “health to the flesh”, the way of folly has a different end: Your honor given to another, your years to the cruel one, aliens filled with your wealth, your labors go to the house of another, you mourn at last, and your flesh and your body are consumed. But “the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.” (Prov. 4:18, 22; 5:9-11)
Recently I talked to someone whom I love so much. She was sharing, with honest contrite humility, about the pain and grief she experiences due to the aftermath of poor choices. It does no good to look back and say, “If only I would have…” and yet the experience preaches a more powerful sermon than we’d likely hear in church. Doing our own thing is the hardest thing in th world. Sin, disobeying God, even just casually disregarding God’s ways produces more grief, heartache, and strife than any hardship we’ll ever experience in our struggle to follow God.
This week I’ve often had to pinch myself, taking inventory of my blessings. We have a maybe maybe possibility on the horizon that is the most exciting thing I can imagine. Even considering it makes me think, “Why on earth would we of all people deserve such a thing?” And we don’t deserve it, but I feel like all week God has been quietly whispering to me, “I told you I’d bless you. Just trust me.” So many times this year, when it felt like everything was going wrong and why did God hate me and want to take away everything from me, so many times I wondered, “Is this really worth it? Is it worth surrendering to God again and trusting Him?” And of course it is, even if He never blessed me with another thing in the world, of course it is worth it. But I’m reminded again, by life and by His Word, that His path is always and will always be the path of most blessing. They may be delayed (sometimes until eternity!), or hidden (we may be have to change our perspective because blessings have no dollar value), but the blessing is there, and I am reminded all over again of the loving Father Heart of God, who delights in His children and longs to see us follow His way, for His glory and for our good.
I wish I could plead with the world to understand that God’s commands are not burdensome (1 John 5:3). I wish they could understand that when he calls us to do or not to do something, it is to protect us from grief, pain, and lingering regret. God, help us to trust in Your character, to trust that Your good, and that as a loving Father You know best. Help me, help us. We don’t want to do our thing. Help us today. Amen.
LiveDifferent Challenge (22): Use Stuff, Love People; Enjoy Things, Worship God
I will not lie–I’m loving having a home. Sometimes it feels a little funny, when I pull in the driveway I still feel like I’m visiting my brother. But filled with our things, and with Jeff and Dutch, it has quickly become home to me. I have however, noticed a very subtle change during this unpack (as mentioned before, I’ve done this 8 times in our married life). I’ve noticed that stuff has become markedly more exterior than ever before. Let me explain.
I love beauty. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it is natural and normal to relish and enjoy the beauty in things. God does. So naturally, my goal as a wife and mother is not only to create a place of utility, with functional furniture and easily accessible dishes, but to also create a place of beauty, tranquility, and peace. I firmly believe that that is a right and worthy goal. It has actually been really fun getting this house ready because our very goal is to have the house showcase-ready for potential buyers and weekend open-houses. So it’s actually my responsibility to have the house beautiful, and is a perfect excuse to exercise my creativity in home decor. But, as I’ve unpacked and cleaned, arranged, hung pictures, fluffed pillows, folded towels, I’ve noticed that though there is certainly a joy, a very deep and profound joy, in creating this beautiful haven we now call home, it’s strangely exterior to my heart. Before, keeping and beautifying our home was very much part of me, and of course it still is to an extent, but it no longer has any bearing on who I am as a person. My house does not define me. And in that, I’m surprised by the fact that I no longer love my stuff. I don’t! I don’t love my clothes, I don’t love my furniture, and I don’t love my house! They are wonderful, beautiful, functional, useful, and I thank God each day for all of the stuff that I have that carries me through my day. I am thankful for the car that runs, the beautiful dining room table that was purchased 8 months ago for a song at a furniture sale, that Oneida dishes I found at Goodwill yesterday for 99cents. I am thankful for these things, but I don’t love them. I use them and enjoy them. I love people, and worship God.
I’d like to think that I’m just way behind the curve and the rest of the world has already mastered this concept. But sadly, I think we’re all still learning. Right now I’m studying for the upcoming retreat, exploring the final session topic: Enjoying Fulfillment: How to enjoy God’s blessing without worshipping them. Sadly, in our culture we do worship stuff. We love stuff and use people. We get married and use our spouse to provide us happiness, then when the spouse no longer fills that use and fails to make us happy, we move onto another spouse who we then use to make us happy again. We use our friends, family, co-workers. We engage in relationships and friendships so long as that person contributes to our well-being. As soon as they deplete our emotional resources or do not contribute to our happiness, we move on. We use people.
And sadly, we love things. We are notorious for the delusional belief that more stuff will make us happy. Now that we’ve moved, we were planning on taking a trip to Ikea to get inexpensive things we need for the house. Our city’s Ikea has been open for over a year, but we’ve never gone because I didn’t want to create discontentment in my heart about not having a home (like going shopping when you have no money). So we figured now we’d go and find stuff we need. But strangely, as I’ve thought this week about taking a trip there, I cannot think of any stuff that we need. (Well, we need a plastic shower curtain liner, which will run me about $1.50, and we need a little curtain rod for Dutch’s room, which is $3.99.) Besides that, I can’t for the life of me think of anything that we need. Blessed state! The mistake I (and all Americans) usually make is that we love stuff, so we love to go to stores to see what we need, because we love to see all the stuff that we supposedly need.
So, I have not arrived, but I am beginning to see a tiny hair of progress by the grace of God. The clothing fast (I’m almost at 5 months without buying clothes!), the year of living with mom and dad, the jobless state that has been our life :-), I’m beginning to see how God was slowly extracting poisonous roots of materialism from my heart. I know there are probably still some pretty stubborn ones in there, but I’ll trust God to continue to root those out.
So, where am I going with all this? I suppose I’m just challenging myself, and you if you wish, to make a conscious effort this week to simply use stuff and enjoy people. Don’t use the people in your life–love them unconditionally. Don’t love the stuff you own, use it. Enjoy the things that you have, but gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and worship Him, the one who made all things. How can we do this practically? For me this means being content with the state of our home, without looking for more things that we “need”. It means pouring my time and effort into being with people, ministering, working on my notes for the retreat, playing with Dutch, talking with Jeff. It means spending less time thinking about how much weight I’ve gained (6 lbs. since my last prenatal appointment–good grief! Ok, done thinking about it.), or how all of Dutch’s pants are too short and he looks kind of dorky.
Use and enjoy the things that you have. Love the people in your life (even the difficult ones!), and worship the God who gives us all things freely to enjoy. Worship Him alone.