Twenty-One: Expectations vs. Reality

Maybe this is what twenty-one feels like. I thought to myself. A couple days ago, a few days before my birthday, I sat with two friends as we pondered and discussed housing arrangements for next semester... My last semester living on a campus as a college student. What. Then the conversation shifted to grad school. We want to look into a certain school together, maybe apply, see about living in that town. Hold on.

How am I this old? How am I planning for student teaching and Thailand and grad school and after college already? How am I already to the point of making my own budget, cooking my own meals, saving for that strange and crazy world after graduation? Graduation has always seemed like a far away pie in the sky. Something only for grown people, adults with plans and dreams and futures lined out. I don't even know what I'm eating for dinner most nights, how can I figure out my plans for the rest of my life?!?

Okay, deep breaths.

See, the thing is, I am not alone. No one else knows what they want to do. And even those who do will see their plans changed twice or thrice over during the course of their lives. It's okay to not have it figured out. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to make a weird choice and suffer the consequences. It's okay to budget wrong or spend too much and have to pay the "stupid tax," as my grandma calls it.

Because, you see, I am only human. Becoming an adult does not mean that you are somehow more than human. Adults make mistakes all the time.

So I guess it comes down to expectations verses reality. For example, I had once hoped that I would be in a dating relationship by my 21st birthday. Yet I always saw myself as a very independent and very single college graduate. I know things can happen between now and graduation (I've got a little over a year), but I've started to wonder if this really is the place where I will meet the guy God has for me. I wonder if we will start dating in college or sometime later.

When I had decided on a school for college, my mom's boss told her that the school I eventually chose is a great school, spiritually and academically. She told my mom that the reason this was important is that I will probably be meeting my future husband here. I agree with her in that typically you would find great guys at a great school, but it is frustrating to me when people assume that is why girls go to college. I am not going through four years of college to get my MRS degree. Come on now. I'm going through college so I can be equipped to teach for the rest of my life. I'm going to college for experiences I otherwise wouldn't have been able to have, things like living on a hall with thirty beautiful and crazy ladies in a building with almost ninety squealing freshmen girls. I'm going to college so I can have experiences like traveling to Hong Kong and Laos last summer to teach English and befriend students. I'm going to college, a Christian college, so I can learn how my faith interacts with and calls me to my career, how God works in the secular arena. All of those things can happen simultaneously with marriage, but the point is that marriage is not my focus in this.

Expectations verses reality... I didn't expect to get married right out of college, but a part of me did expect to date here. A part of me did expect certain relationships to be different. And yet looking back, I'm encouraged that God did not allow certain events (and allowed others instead). He knows what he's doing!

Another expectation verses reality is that I often expected that college would change me into a totally different person. In all honesty, I am different. I am much more likely to talk to people I don't know well, much more likely to share about my faith, much more likely to worship freely, and much less likely to worry as much as I did in high school. Yet, I am still the same person. I've dealt with a lot of crap and pain, but I am still dealing with it. I am very, very different, but I am still me. I am still an introvert, I am still a "J" personality, but I feel as if I am more well-rounded now.

Someone once told me that in college, we become over-exaggerated versions of ourselves. As we grow older, we mellow out. After college, we "slide into" the personas we discovered ourselves to be during college, and it gets toned down a bit. I think that is a great way of putting it.

Therefore, I'm becoming myself.

In all actuality, this is earth-shattering. See, I started this blog exactly 3 years ago today and named it "LosingMyself" because I wanted to focus on the fact that the purpose of life is not to go and do and "find" myself, but to lose myself in Him. I wonder if that is a correct way to look at it. I wonder if that is how I see life anymore. For example, I feel most alive when I am serving God in the capacities in which he's gifted me. I love teaching and I feel as if God has given me abilities to teach. This is becoming more Christ-like, through service, but it is also definitely becoming myself. What if becoming like Christ is really becoming who I was meant to be originally? As in, what if becoming like Christ is honing and developing the elements of me (and Christ in me) that are good?

I wrestle with this here because it is very intriguing to me. I have been facing up to who I am as I grow into me each day, and I wonder, yet again, if this is what twenty-one feels like. I still have two days, but I feel as if I'm getting much closer.

I wanted to share this blog post from December 2011. I had just finished Fall semester sophomore year when I composed this post referencing the acts of growing and serving in the season of singleness. I wrote:

...After this summer (spending five weeks in Asia [June-August 2012]), and my junior year..., what kind of person will emerge? A stronger, deeper, healthier, and more Christ-like person, that’s my prayer. I made a list a couple months ago of qualities I desired in my future husband, but also qualities that I would seek to reach as well. One such quality was the ability to attempt difficult things. Challenging things. Things like ministering overseas, but also things like becoming yourself.

I think too many of us are afraid of who really are, but like my psychology professor always says: “There must be a ‘me’ before there can be a ‘we’.” A Relevant Magazine article discusses the importance of singleness as it relates to your individuality: “Making the most of being single means being on your own. It’s just you and God. Being single is about discovering who you are, setting personal boundaries, knowing your likes and dislikes, your passions and the desires of your heart.”

I'm three-quarters of the way finished with my junior year, and I am so encouraged by the prediction I made at the end of 2011. I have become myself so much more during this time and I am grateful for that.

A final expectations versus reality moment: I did not expect to experience God as much I have since I've been in college. There was a time months ago when I specifically knew that God was speaking to me. I wrote about it in regards to going to Asia, "My heart skips a beat, my peripheral vision clouds over, I can’t breathe." It was definite. However, there was a long time in which that did not happen, and it hasn't happened recently, which led me to wonder if God was still speaking to me. Or is it just that I'm not listening?

My roommate challenged me to ask God for more of Himself, so I did. This past week, I had time with God each morning for five straight days, which I haven't done in a while. He also showed me some amazing things through not only that time with Him, but also the consistency of his love and his provision. For example, I have been yearning for a while for God to show me my new name. Our September spiritual emphasis week at college focused on our brokenness, and how God wants to come and sit with us there. At the end of the week, we were given the opportunity to take a small stone to remind us that God is giving us new names. A connection was made to the invitation Jewish people would give friends they were inviting to a wedding. In a sense, God is writing our new and true names on our invitations to eternity with him. I was reminded of Isaiah 62:4, as God is renaming Jerusalem. I was pondering this desire when my morning devotional was on Zephaniah chapter three. We are all familiar with verse 17, but I wanted to draw your attention to the remainder of the chapter (emphasis mine):

For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
"I will gather you who mourn for the appointed festivals;
you will be disgraced no more.
And I will deal severely with all who have oppressed you.
I will save the weak and helpless ones;
I will bring together
those who were chased away.
I will give glory and fame to my former exiles,
wherever they have been mocked and shamed.
On that day I will gather you together
and bring you home again.
I will give you a good name, a name of distinction,
among all the nations of the earth,
as I restore your fortunes before their very eyes.
I, the Lord, have spoken!"

Maybe twenty-one will be about accepting who I am and who God made me to be: a single adult allowing God to change me and refine me to become more Christ-like and more me. And I'm okay with that.
In fact, it's a pretty exciting adventure. Let's do it.

Edited 3/25/13 at 9:54pm for labels.

Relapse (Or, Grace Upon Grace)

It always happens the same way. Stress tends to build up like a slow but severe snow storm and, before I know it, I’m snowed in. Or, rather, “stressed”-in. I have lost the simplistic joy I once felt. I have mistaken jokes for criticisms and companionship for annoyance. I have done what I do best in tumult – hide. I take introversion too far. I snap at people. I neglect the needs and desires of those around me. I cannot see above the obligations, the homework, the work hours, the confusion. I cannot see God. I slip into the sin that so easily entangles and I cannot find my way out. The tension within stretches and snaps my frail defenses.

But God (the two greatest words in my opinion), in his infinite wisdom, draws me back to himself like an adoring father forgiving his daughter, like a patient lover restoring his bride. I don’t know why he wants me again. After letting the things of this world almost crowd him out of my vision, I do not understand why he would fight to be my vision and fight to win back my heart.

But he is. He is fighting for me. Early last week, I flipped my Bible open to 2 Chronicles 20, when God tells the people that they need only to “stand firm” while he fights on their behalf. God’s got this. He knows what he’s doing.

I could have sworn that the gorgeous, warm day we had this past Sunday was created just for me. Warm weather is a blessing to the soul, and I welcomed it wholeheartedly by letting two friends convince me to hammock with them. I read Edith Wharton while lying in a friend’s hammock and experiencing a strange sense of peace. It was as if I had vitamin D deficiency and the sunshine was recharging a battery of sorts. A physical battery and an emotional battery.

We read from Job on Sunday morning and I was reminded of Job’s blatant finite-ness compared with the amazingly infinite God he served.

Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do anything, and no one can stop You. You asked, ‘Who is this that questions My wisdom with such ignorance?’ It is I--and I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me… I had only heard about You before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”

(Job 42:1-3,5-6)

It is in the place of brokenness, when have not spent with time with God earlier, when we are falling into sin and fear, that we often call out to God to save us. I wonder if God gets upset with us. If you had just stayed with me earlier, you wouldn't be in this mess, I imagine him saying sometimes. Yet that doesn't sound like God. God doesn't bring up all the bad things Job must have done to be deserving this pain, but he does ask Job who he thinks he is. Job answers by saying, “I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head” (Job 42:5, MSG). God demonstrates his omnipotence and omniscience in this situation and he proves Job's (and man's as a whole) nothingness.

Yet I don't think that God was necessary angry in the last couple chapters of Job. I think he was acting like a powerful father in a kind of protective rage. In a sense, he wants to prove man's nothingness so man will return to him with all he is. God isn't sitting up on some cloud berating me for the combination of circumstances and mistakes that led to this stressful situation. God isn't criticizing me for not running to Him at first sight of what I could not handle.

He’s standing here with his arms open. He is asking me to come back.

This world is not our home and it will not treat us kindly or fairly, but take heart, because He has overcome the world.

John 1, while describing Jesus's incarnation, pauses for a minute to discuss Christ in relation to the law. Basically, where the law could not provide peace or salvation for us, Christ does. God's unfailing love came from Christ, not from the law we couldn't keep. John 1:16 says, "From [Christ's] abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another."

The English Standard Version comes close to what I've read that the original Greek means. It translates "one gracious blessing after another" as "grace upon grace." The Amplified Bible translates it as "gift heaped upon gift." My friends, even in our times of relapse, brokenness, shame, pain, or confusion... Because Christ came and died for us, we have grace heaped upon grace freely available.

He is a God who welcomes us back.

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This post was contributed to Only a Breath's Monthly link-up party for OneWord365 bloggers on March 14th, 2013. 

"What is Man?" [My Thoughts on Lent]

Stuck between hours of reading, journal responses, and craft nights for Valentine's Day sits something I usually scarcely notice. My desk and the kitchen table are scattered with glittery heart stickers and pink and red hole scraps of paper. There are books everywhere.

My nights are late. When they're not, my mornings are early. And sometimes both.

This is the point of the semester when you prove yourself. It's not yet mid-terms. It's not yet pay-day. The homework level has increased to the typical norm and you must balance your time wisely so you can complete the bigger tasks that lay ahead.

I am not-so-patiently awaiting details on overseas student teaching, acceptance at a summer job, and confirmation for my future. I struggle with feeling alone, again, on Valentine's Day. I struggle with feeling tired too early in the semester. I struggle with keeping a budget when I'm on the five-meal plan. I struggle with freedom.

Today was Ash Wednesday, which marked the beginning of the Lenten season. My college has, in the past couple semesters, introduced a variety of worship styles. Our chapel service this morning was an Ash Wednesday service based on Anglican liturgy. It included Scripture reading, responsive reading, chanting, kneeling, standing, prayers aloud and silently, and the traditional ashen cross. We were given the option of coming forward during the Imposition of Ashes to receive the cross on our foreheads.

While the speaker, a professor here, spoke candidly about how we must not skip ahead to the resurrection too soon, I found myself longing for it desperately throughout the service. It is true that being raised in communities that only barely resemble liturgical churches may have colored my perception of liturgy. However, it seems to me that we can get too easily caught up in guilt and shame and sin that we neglect to act as if and believe that we are forgiven. Having lived in a mindset of legalism, guilt (real and false), and worthlessness for years, I am tired of feeling guilty for my sins any longer. Maybe that is not the appropriate response, but it is exactly how I feel. I don't want to be beaten over the head with rules that make me feel like crap. Don't God and I have a relationship?

Someone once told me that legalism is the natural course of the heart. When we realize we aren't doing it perfectly, we strive to make rules for ourselves so that we will, by our estimation. What we don't understand is that God doesn't want rules and God doesn't want sacrifices. He wants us to do what he says out of love, not out of a fear that we don't, we will be struck down from heaven.

Yet perhaps there is a time and a place for the "Ash Wednesday" phenomenon. I mean, the church calendar has been around for ages and no one really seems to have a huge problem with today's purple and black and ash crosses. Yes, my sinfulness brings me to my knees on many occasions. I guess the problem I have is with "requiring" repentance just because this is the beginning of a season.

I would just like to change the connotation of the Lenten season. Rather than a time of repentance and sad reflection, let this be a time of eager anticipation. Do not fast because it somehow reminds you of the suffering of Christ (how can it even compare?). Fast because it allows you that time to devote to knowing Christ more. And never, by any means, fast because everyone else is doing it. Fast (from anything) because God is telling you to do it.

In the scheme of things, finite man is nothing compared to infinite God. Nothing. But the fact remains that he is deeply in love with us. Why? Because he is delighted in the creation that he chose to create.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

- Psalm 8:3-5

Grace Means Freedom and Second Chances

Freedom is what happens when you choose to forgive, and forgiveness is a process. A long process. And it's pretty stinkin' hard.

I was talking with a good friend tonight who has been feeling disrespected and unappreciated, and she was angry towards the person she felt had wronged her. She told me that she knew she wanted to love and forgive this person, but she didn't know how to love someone with whom she didn't have a relationship.

How do you love someone you don't know? How do you forgive someone with whom you don't already have the basis of relationship?

I smiled and cried at the same time, because I realized it could be done.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

- Romans 5:8

God loved us before he had a relationship with us. How do we know? Because he forgave us. He gave us his Son so that we could be reconciled to him. If God was not all-knowing, his gift of his Son would be a bit like an act of faith. It would be God extending his offer of forgiveness and waiting to see if we would accept it.

Of course, God is omniscient, so I don't think that was an issue for him, but it is worth acknowledging because it applies to us. If you have a healthy relationship with someone, you can say without fear, "Hey, it bothers me when you don't take out the trash, could you please take it out next time?" Or, "I'm sorry about what I said about you." But if you do not have a relationship, or even a healthy relationship, with the person who has wronged you, forgiveness is so much more harder. You have to put yourself out there in an act of faith, hoping that they will give you what you are asking for.

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I was blessed to have a very encouraging time of closure in a broken friendship earlier this week. When the friendship dissolved, we were both forced to seek God individually, alone and in appropriate communities, and the conversation this week was about what God has done in our lives since that time. And God has done some beautiful things.

I remember praying desperately and clinging to hope when things started crashing around me during the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. Remembering that God is good enabled me to keep clinging to Him through that time. Songs like "Times" and "Beautiful Things" rang in my ears. I didn't have immediate proof that all things worked out for our good and His glory, so I held on to the hope that they would eventually.

A year and a half later, God showed me the beautiful things he did through that time. He brought two people out of the crap they were stuck in and washed off the dust that settled on them after the collapse of a friendship and a ministry. He brought us out of places of darkness, sin, and pain through a catastrophic event.

God made us new and has given us second chances.

I was able to forgive this person only, ironically, after I realized God's forgiveness for me. I could extend grace only after I received God's grace towards me. In that point of forgiveness, I realized that grace is freedom.

Now, set free through God's gift of grace from things which kept me in chains of brokenness, I am alive. I am given a second chance. God made me a new creation when he rescued me from the eternal consequences of my sin, but he also continues to make me a new creation each day when his mercies are new.

Jesus is pleading for us even today because we still sin even today.

- Bryan Chapell
His attitude towards us is full of grace, not shame, not anger, not bitterness. The Son is pleading for us before the Father to bring about his righteousness over us. Because he loves us.

Finally, I see that grace has brought about a purpose to my mistakes instead of shame. For one, my mistakes led to the development of a healthier and stronger relationship with Christ. I can rest in that.

Edited 3/25/13 at 9:57pm for labels.