Monday, February 6, 2012

who do i want to be?...

Am I the person who the person I am looking for is looking for? This seems like a very confusing question until you really start to look at the question, think about the question, and understand the context of the question. The context of the question has to do with the sermon from yesterday at Oasis, where I have been able to attend church for the last couple of weeks. The pastor was talking about how we, in our western culture, are so concerned with ‘finding the perfect person for us to marry’.

The pastor asked us to think about whether or not we are the person we should be so the person we are looking to marry would want to marry us as well. He told this story to better illustrate this point (it may be paraphrased a little bit).

A 20-something woman who grew up in a Christian home and had a faith in Christ while growing up went off to college and strayed from that faith and her relationship and has decided to live out her life differently. Sometime after beginning college and living this new life of living out her desires rather than her faith she is at a gathering of sorts and she meets a young man. This young man is successful, he has a good job and he is living out his faith in a way that does not leave a doubt in anyone’s mind that he is a follower of Christ who wants to follow His desires for the young man’s life. The young woman goes home and gushes to her mother about the man that she meant and tells her mom that this man is the type of man she wants to marry. He mother looks at her daughter and says ‘you are not the type of woman that this man will want to marry’. The young woman collapsed to the ground and wept as she realized that her mother is completely right.

The pastor than asked us to think about how we would fit into this same kind of story. If we found the person who we wanted to marry, would they also want to marry us?

It is this question that has captured my thoughts for the last couple of days as I have wrestled with the idea. I know that I need to be secure in my faith and comfortable being ‘alone’ before I can be in a relationship with someone and this is something that I am always working on. I am single, however, sometimes I am not okay with being alone and I want more, and instead of seeking God in these times I sometimes (sometimes I do as I know I should and seek God to fill the void I feel) look to find affection and approval from other people. I also know that I need to be a woman of faith; a woman of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23) and someone who not only claims these attributes but also someone who lives them out. This is who God has designed me to be and this is what I need to strive for in my life. It will be in this that God will show me who it is that He has brought in to my life to become my husband and it will be in this that I will be ready to become a wife and a person who can live in relationship with another and still hold on to who I am as an individual but also as one of a pair.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

some thoughts on life

This past week has been one where I have been thinking a lot about human mortality. Don’t worry; this is not going to be a morbid post about death. However, my post today will have something to do with death but not morbidly.

This past Saturday night a girl who I knew when I was in school passed away after suddenly falling into a coma just over a week before. Her doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her and they had no idea why she was in a coma, or if she would recover from this coma. From the last I have heard the doctors still don’t know what was wrong. This is a scary thought to think that the doctors who make a lot of money and spend a lot of time in school learning how to do their jobs could not figure out what was going on.

When I found out about Erika being in a coma I was with my good group of friends and we spent time praying for her and her family. The week that followed I again spent time in praying for Erika and her family, and I hope that my prayers now, for peace and comfort for the family members and friends, are ones that are being answered in the way that I imagine them being answered. Because, yes, even though we prayed, what we were praying didn’t exactly happen. We prayed for healing for Erika and knowledge for the doctors but that did not happen. We also prayed for God’s will to be done in the whole situation, which, I am sure is exactly what happened, therefore, how we imagined our prayers being answered didn’t happen but our prayers were still answered.

How did this all get me to thinking about human mortality, you may ask. Well Erika was only 24 years old and as far as I know had been (relatively) healthy up until this point in her life. This makes me realize just how fragile life is and just how possible it is to be here one day and gone the next. It is impossible to know when it is your time to go but I do know that we do have some control about how we spend our time and what we devote our lives to. I know that a lot of time of my life has been spent following my own desires and focusing on my own goals instead of the desires that God has for my life. I have, numerous times, taken the steps necessary to realign my goals with the desires that God has for my life but it never takes very long to fall short and start
chasing my own desires again. It is something that I continue to work through and I have come to realize that I cannot follow the desires of God for my life without His help because I am imperfect and I don’t know what exactly it is that He has in mind for me. It is because of this realization that I continue to run back to my heavenly Father through prayer and His Word. I think this is a lesson that I, and many Christians, need to learn time and time again. Thankfully God is a God of grace and he doesn’t grow weary in teaching us.

I am so thankful that I can continue to go to God and lean on Him for strength, understanding, knowledge, grace and forgiveness.