Dark Times - 4-15-10

Dark times. Don’t I hate them sometimes. The other day, after returning to work after Spring Break, I was really struggling. Still am, truth be told.

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Am I an utter fool? I must be. He’s never coming back. I had decided to stand against what I knew was a lie – that I had left him completely unaffected. I knew it to be a lie. He is too careful and cautious, too mindful of letting himself get swept away – those weeks of what I found in his eyes were not what crops up as easily as weeds in a more unstable man. He could not have changed me so absolutely, colored my lenses so indelibly, and remained so unmoved himself. I am not a foolish teenager; no schoolgirl. I outgrew my pigtails long ago. I knew what I was seeing in him. And what I was seeing in his eyes when he was looking at me.

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He is seriously incapable of being selfish when he needs to be. No matter how much he wanted to make something real with me, the thought that he would cause me pain staunched that impulse like a tourniquet. So it’s entirely possible he truly misses me, that nothing else feels right after me, that I’ve ruined him for anyone else, and I’d never know it because he wouldn’t return for fear of hurting me again. He doesn’t think himself worthy of the trouble and effort and risk. But I know – I know – that he has not forgotten me. That his view of the world is as subtly and universally tinted as mine. I know he remembers the sweetness and openness that he said so enchanted him.

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But, man, is it tough sometimes to imagine his stubbornness – born out of a lifetime of putting others’ needs above his own – could be overcome, even if God intended him for me. I know him. He is strong. Strong enough, stubborn enough, unselfish enough to stay away all his life, never allowing so much as a whiff of his presence to be detected, even if it kept him unsatisfied. Stupid man.

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It just is too ridiculous, this whole purpose. Interpreting all these Scriptures as proof of my place as ezer kenegdo. I really am a fool, aren’t I? How would he ever come back? It surely is too good to be true.

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After a stupid straw bruised my back Monday night, something that should have only elicited a tolerant groan of irritation instead of driving me to tears, I just stood beside my bed and said, “Sorry, God, I can’t go in my prayer closet now and find you. I would have to still and quiet my soul and I can’t do that right now, so I’d just be wasting your time and mine.” I stilled the fluttering of my ribcage as much as I could as I stood there, obstinately facing the door, my arms laced around me like armor. Then I got in bed and, just on a thread of an impulse, just on the off-chance God might meet me where I was blinded by more than my tears, I opened my Bible.

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The fan flipped some of the pages and I found myself at Jeremiah 31:22 – “A woman will surround a man.” A part of me just wanted to shake my head in dumb frustration. I half-heartedly flipped randomly again and found myself in Psalms. First I found Psalm 139, describing how God knows me, hems me in, before and behind, and fearfully and wonderfully made me. The tears started coming and while I was blinking them away the fan flipped a couple of pages to Psalm 144. My eyes fell on verses 12-14, catching especially the last verse: “There will be no breaching of walls, no going into captivity, no cry of distress in our streets.” I flipped a whole section of the Bible and found myself, wonder of wonders, at 2 Chronicles 20, the story of Jehoshaphat facing the Moabite and Ammonite army. I had been given this passage when I was first being attacked in this purpose. "[This army is too strong for us.] We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.” And the response: “Do not be afraid, no not be discouraged because of this vast army. For this battle is not yours, but God’s . . . Take up your positions, stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.”

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At that point, I just cried out, “God, what do you want from me?!” And I wept in my exhaustion and discouragement.

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Next morning, I sat in the dark of my prayer closet, eyes aching from the crying the night before, and was quiet, mulling over the four passages I’d been led to. It couldn’t have just been accidental. Of all the verses in the Bible to turn randomly to. All four verses have been important to me in these last few months. And I began to wonder if a correct interpretation would be:

- Passage 1 – my purpose

- Passage 2 – my comfort

- Passage 3 – my promise

- Passage 4 – my instructions

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It’s been a rough week, feeling like the worst fool for this ludicrous stubbornness in holding to this purpose. Feeling left and abandoned all over again. Thinking, as I did in the early days, “One day everything won’t remind me of him. One day I won’t think about him all the time.” Feeling alone and unlovely and crushingly ordinary in this life. Feeling sexless and womanless, nothing more than a body. And all the while knowing my God doesn’t change. That his heart’s desire is for this man to be free, and if it was his heart’s desire a month ago, it was a millennium ago and it will be tomorrow. That he has proven himself worthy of my trust and proven himself faithful.

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This has to just be the most subtle, most pervasive, and most powerful attack yet – to make me feel so completely ordinary and unoriginal. Like I am an idiot to think I could be special enough for a transcendent purpose like this and actually hope to see its fruition with my own eyes. So I can only keep my helmet of salvation in place and know what I know and wait to see what God does. For he will surely fight for me.

My Isaac - 4-9-10

You know, God, if you asked me to, I’d give him up. I’d lay him down again and turn around and walk away and never look back. If you said, after all this, “He is not for you. You have done all you needed to do. Move on,” I would.

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I love this man with all that is within me. I love him with my life force. I would lay down my life for him and I would destroy any enemy who threatens him. I would die for him, but more than that, I would live for him. And I would still not hesitate to lay him on the altar once again, this time not to have him handed back like the best Christmas present.

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How, I ask myself? How, when I can picture so clearly the extent of the loss, can I say with perfect peace and calm determination that I would sacrifice him for good?

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It’s quite simple. As much as I love this beautiful, complex, impossible man who speaks my language, I love you more. As much as the thought of him, warts and all, delights me, you thrill me more. Impossible. But true.

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I love him. I want him. I long for him mind, body, and soul. But I can live without him. You, however, I cannot. He is my beloved, but you are essential to me. I can sit here week after week waiting for you to bring B____ back to me, but there is no sitting on my hands when I comes to you. I’ll do whatever it takes to get to you. I’ll march, I’ll run, I’ll crawl to get to you. You are life to me. It isn’t B____who finally convinced me it was worth staying on this planet a little longer; no, that actually was you.

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I love him. I want him.

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But I must have you.

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You I love first and best.

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Let Us Go A-Job-Hunting - 4-8-10

Today was a weird day. It was just . . . weird. I had been planning to use this week – Spring Break – to do some serious job-hunting and I’ve been putting it off. Then Mom called and asked me to come over so she could help me do all this stuff. Within minutes of the call, I’m on my knees in my prayer closet, sobbing. Nothing undoes me like job-hunting and I’ve been doing it for so long now. I tried to figure out what lies I’ve been believing all these years to make me dread it so – for it must be lies that make me feel so hopeless, so full of dread, so angry that I have to keep doing this. God’s truths wouldn’t reduce me to this; they wouldn’t make me feel so bad. One of the lies is that whatever I do, it will go nowhere. One of the things I have been believing about my current job as a matter of fact. After all, everyone else is looking for jobs, the economy is crushed, and I haven’t put in nearly enough effort to yield anything. I’ll just be job-hunting my entire life.

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Lie #2: I’m so desperate to escape this job that I won’t be able to discern a good job from a job I want for the escape it offers, and I’ll just flip right out of the frying pan into the fire. I’ll keep bouncing from hateful job to hateful job forever.

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Well, obviously, those are totally imbalanced views of the thing. The fuel for the fire is that my experience with work has only ever been bad. The couple of years I honestly enjoyed my job hit a brick wall of betrayal of my ideals. It turned out to be a lie. So I have no way to really picture a job I love that I can feel good about feeling good about.

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I’m afraid I didn’t acquit myself well at Mom’s house. I was grouchy on steroids: hunching over my computer, frowning mightily with the pounding headache right behind my eyes (not helped by the crying jag in my bathroom beforehand), monosyllabic responses. I felt bad about it afterwards – I wasn’t really showing my faith in God to my mother who struggles with that herself. She even said to me, “You don’t believe God will lead you to a job that won’t be a total drudgery?” I said, no, I didn’t think that, and that was the truth, but I still couldn’t figure out how to stand on the truth. Even more than the dark periods of doubt about my purpose for B____ and his family where I just had to stand on what I know, it seemed with my work that I couldn’t see which truths to apply. I felt so strongly that God is all over this other part of my life – the life outside of work – but that he just keeps forgetting to notice this third of my life that’s melting away. Which is absolutely incorrect. And I know it.

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So I went for a walk to clear my head in the beautiful hot afternoon and on a whim – I get a lot of those, don’t I? – I took the path rarely taken; the same path I walked down (and journaled about later) a year and a half ago when I was wrestling with signing up for Match.com. I remember that day so clearly – I so recall what it felt like to be closed in on all sides with choices I didn’t want to make, this me who had not yet met the most remarkable, stubborn, complicated maddening man in the world, who had no notion of how to fight a real enemy or keep taking steps in the dark. Man, I remember when all I could see was not love or grand purpose or satisfaction in my God but just the cold, tight limitations of my present circumstances. And look what God did with that infinitesimal seed of simply creating my profile on Match. And who’s to say he can’t do the same thing with the tiny seed of a random online job application? He knew all my visualization entries. He knew what I dreamed for in love, what would satisfy my long-unfulfilled longings. For heaven’s sake, he made them, didn’t he?

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Well, he did the same with my dreams for my work. He knows I need more than just pushing papers around; I need to believe in what I’m doing. I believe there are many people who don’t have that need because they get fulfillment outside of work, and those people are necessary. But I need to have a point, a purpose in my work. I need to know I’m making a difference. He knows this. He knows that there is a time for blooming where you’re planted, for training seasons and preparation chambers, and a time for a true calling. He knows I just want to wake up in the morning and not have to brace myself for the day, marshal my resources, and launch into the litany of reasons to be grateful. I want to get word that I’ve got the job – whatever it is – and say, “I can’t wait to get started.” It does a lot of good, it really does, to pass the test when you do have to keep pressing forward, drawing all your strength from God. It prepares you to keep holding to him even when the famine gives way to plenty and everything is so much easier. But he also knows I don’t want another place-holder in my life. Another “bloom where you’re planted.” It’s time for me to discover at last what it’s like for something to work the way it’s supposed to. I want to feel the way I feel with this purpose for my people. Even in the dark moments, it doesn’t take long before I’m standing straight again, exulting in the firmness and rightness of my purpose.

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To tell you the truth, even more than being a College Textbook Sales Representative, which really is tailor-made for my personality and experience, I want to help people. Women in particular. Young women as they navigate this life and the often unsettling business of finding God in their everyday struggles. I’ve started posting these journal entries on a blog and have truly helped guide or comfort to couple of my friends. I’ve learned some hard lessons and my heart is that of a teacher, and I’m still in that “young women” stage of life. I feel I have so much to offer. And I have no idea, not a clue, how God might use that. But it is pleasing to him, I know that much. I’d love to do something like that, something meaty and real and needed. And he knows that, too.

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I’m going to trust that this God who is so intent on my good and attentive to my every need is not forgetful. He knows how important one’s work is to oneself and how very much good one can do through work. I’m trusting that this God who knows exactly what I crave in love and is forming that as we speak is also quite aware of every desire and urge he put into my composition for my work.

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His eye is ever on my end, and he has a marvelous job out there for me in the wilderness. A job I would never have imagined at my college job fair. A job that lifts my heart and grounds my spirit at the mere thought of it. A job where I make a difference, help others improve their lives, and teach and train where it’ll actually go somewhere. A job where I can use all these lessons I’ve learned and know what fulfillment is.

Ezer Kenegdo - 4-7-10

The Lord will create a new thing on earth –

A woman will surround a man.

– Jeremiah 31:22

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I found this verse a couple of months ago and felt in my spirit that it applied to this purpose that had already begun to materialize out of the fog of my confusion and grief. Oh, how little I yet know.

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God is downright not to be believed. He is the very definition of unbelievable and yet he is completely trustworthy. A God of paradoxes. I shouldn’t wonder I myself am filled with them: my Creator is the ultimate storehouse of them. Last night I put “helpmeet” in the search engine, just on a whim, a ripple of curiosity. Funny how so many of those are actually the whisperings of a greater power at work. I pulled up thread after thread that had been woven into this whole tapestry.

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I knew from reading John Eldredge that Eve had been created as Adam’s ezer kenegdo, a lifesaver, and that the term was only used elsewhere in Scripture to describe God when he was coming through for his people in their desperate need. Well, apparently, the term ezer (which is where the “help” of “helpmeet” comes from), according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible means “aid; help.” Azar means “to surround; i.e. protect or aid; help; succor.” Kenegdo means “corresponding to, counterpart to, equal to, matching.” That’s where the “meet” came from; basically to meet a need or requirement. Wow.

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Well, when I studied further, I learned that the ezer of Eve’s title originally had two roots, one meaning “power” and the other, “strength.” The traditional interpretation of Eve’s title portrays more of a help, comfort, support, to the exclusion of the other side of the indivisible coin: the noun ezer appears twenty-one times in the Old Testament to denote strength or power. It is often a military context that is used, such as in Deuteronomy 33:26-29. The strength or power of a fighter, a warrior.

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Kenegdo didn’t just mean an ezer (or help) suitable for Adam. It means a true match, as in “I will make a power [or strength] corresponding to man.” “God makes for the made a woman fully his equal and fully his match. In this way the man’s loneliness will be assuaged.”

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Wow. Again.

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There is no one else who could do what I do. I am ezer kenegdo for one man and one man alone. It is inconceivable that I should do this impossible purpose and lubricate the wheels of God’s freedom and purpose for this man only to go on to some easier man, a man I never had to fight for, who never needed what I had all along to offer. How could any other man be my true match? How could any other woman truly understand B____ and earn him as I have done?

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There never was any hope for us. We were doomed from the start. I was always going to awaken to hope and faith at his touch and he was always going to turn away in his lack of them. Our story was never going to bloom. But that’s not figuring in God. God specializes in the impossible. Anything less just isn’t as fun. He exults in the desert, the wasteland, the desolate places because he loves proving that the unchanging God is a God of glorious change, that the God of perfection loves to take imperfection in his hands. B____ was always going to leave and I was always going to be devastated.

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And God was always going to move stones. He is the Resurrection and the Life.

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It was always going to be this hard and lonely. But my research took me to that question, too. A sermon by C.I. Scofield called “Waiting on the Lord” showed up in one of my links. It dissected that glorious verse in Isaiah 40:31:

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But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength,

They shall mount up with wings as eagles;

They shall run and not be weary,

And they shall walk, and not faint.

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The point that resonated with me the loudest was the analysis of the part about eagles. Eagles are solitary creatures, unlike many other birds, and they reach unparalleled heights. Scofield explains that, much as eagles, we have to fly alone with God before we can come back down to earth to do good for others and God’s kingdom. As Scofield so eloquently puts it:

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Before God uses a man greatly, he isolates him. He gives him a separating experience; and when it is over, those about him, who are no less loved than before, are no longer depended upon. He realizes he is separated unto God, that the wings of the soul have learned to beat the upper air, and that God has shown him unspeakable things.

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This is why I needed to be completely alone with God during this time. Why every time I considered bringing someone into the mystery of this strange purpose, something in me whispered, “Not yet.” I had to have time to learn God’s voice. I had to recognize it while there were no other voices to compete, to rely upon, so that when I rejoined the world I would still be able to pick out that still, small voice from the unending clamor. I have been completely changed from ten months ago, in large part because I had no one else to rely upon as I navigated these foreign waters. And God has shown me, and continues to show me unspeakable things. Things not to be imagined. Impossibilities.

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I was reading my journal the other day and remembering my supreme reluctance to sign up for Match.com. I couldn’t comprehend that that should be “our story,” even though I knew without a doubt that if I did find him on Match, I would never say a word of minding. Which was true. But my untested, weaker mind could never have guessed at – conceived – the full truth. That was only the beginning of the story. That was merely the creaking old gate that opened up on a vista beyond imagining. This is our story: not some dusty common dating service, but this. No one I know has anything like this as their story. No one I know has fought for their love as I have, no one earned their prize with so much blood and tears and sweat. This is the ultimate in romance – a warrior, a prize, the wilderness testing every step of the journey. A never-before-seen purpose tempered in the blood of the only One who can save the lost, free the captive. I am Nicole. I am ezer kenegdo. I have a purpose, a point to this long life. I have a name now. And yes, one day, I’ll be the Beauty. I will be rescued and fought for and won, again and again. I will be pursued. But now . . . oh, God, what glories are mine in my strong hands that know the grip of the sword, the carved muscles of the swing and cut, the unbending back and the clear vision. What strength comes from you, what wonders you have wrought in me. I am your daughter. I am your warrior-princess.

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And we are taking our land back.

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For C.I. Scofield’s sermon, click here: http://users.tc3net.com/jpaws/waiting.html

Joy in the Wait - 4-6-10

It does not make sense that I should feel the way I do about this situation. I know me. The me I have been all these years would be furious that I had waited for thirty years, only to see the thing I’ve been waiting for that whole time and be told I have to wait even longer? Indefinitely? Oh, I’d be madder than a hornet. I would be snapping about more years the locusts are taking and ridiculous timing and ludicrous cosmic plans. I should not be curled up with such joyful anticipation, smiling secretly all day long, sleeping with such ease. I should be weighted down with pressure, not with peace.

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But I know what it is I’m waiting for. I am not just waiting for the man of my dreams, which would be reason enough for me, but rather I am waiting for his freedom, for him to see with unscaled eyes his worth, to accept his inalienable identity in this God who formed him with such care. I am waiting for a completely changed life, I am waiting to feel the rust on the broken chains with my own fingers. Oh, I know what I’m waiting for.

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How privileged and humbled I am that this great God has called me his friend. And because I am his friend, because I am joint heir with Christ himself, I can know my Master’s business. He has made known to me some of the inner workings of his awesome plan. No one else knows the things his Spirit has whispered to me in my deep heart and through his perfect Word. That I should know what he plans for these people I love so and give me a role to play, let me help in a real way, just astounds me. He truly is an awesome God, isn’t he?

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And, too, I get what the old me would have gone in circles around, never reaching it. I had to wait so long in order to see B___ for what he was, to know myself well enough to see how he reflected me, and I had to break that long wait toward the end of it by seeing the tantalizing prize for which I had been dreaming before it was snatched away because I had this work to do. I would have once upon a time said, “What, you couldn’t get him ready for me before bringing him to me? Jeez, haven’t you done this before?” But he needed to find me before he started on this last leg of his journey. He couldn’t have made it on his own. He needed his ezer kenegdo, his lifesaver, to fight for him, to stand for him, or he’d never make it through the hardest time he’s faced yet in his struggle for his identity.

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This old me would have answered the tired old question, “Would you wait a lifetime for him?” with, “Uh, no. I’ve waited long enough.” But no, I cannot answer that way anymore. If I had to wait another thirty years for him, give up my youth and my beloved children in the fight, I would. Without reservation or impatience. With joy and peace and gratitude for all that would be gained in the wait. How? How on earth could I say such a thing?

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Because I know his worth.

Battle Scars - 3-29-10

You want to know something funny? Ironic, really. One of the reasons – probably the reason – B____ doubted from the first my love for him was that it was so untried. He said, from all he had seen of real love, “Love to me is battle-scarred. When everything is dark and the chips are down and you have nothing left, love is the thing whispering, ‘I’m still here. Don’t give up.’”

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I want to laugh with the irony of that statement that has taken so many months to manifest. Yes, beloved, love is battle-scarred and far from being scared of that as I was once, I relish it. I am battle-scarred, and rather than finding my love for him cracking under the pressure and the incredible lack of physical confirmation, I bear the wounds proudly. I have seen what God is capable of, which is how I can see what I am capable of.

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Few loves are as battle-scarred as mine. The pure porcelain of it at its inception has steadily been layered over with steel. Nothing can be harder than what I’ve borne alone, and no purpose could be more worth it.

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Battle-scarred, indeed.

Revelation - 3-29-10

Eureka! I realized something today on my way home from work that had somehow eluded me all these months. One of the things I have been reminded of through the Breaking Free bible study is the nature of the enemy. I like how Beth Moore recognizes the danger and the inherent nullification of your purpose when you keep the focus on the enemy, while she still understands the importance of understanding just who it is you’re fighting, not just what you’re fighting for. And I had forgotten that Satan is called more than almost anything else, “the accuser.” As Beth said a few weeks ago, “Man excuses, Satan accuses, and God diffuses.”

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Well, one of the major factors in my difficulty enjoying my job was not just the behavior of the kids and the pressure of testing, but also this sense of feeling “not enough.” I couldn’t shake this low confidence in myself. Even though I knew God had redeemed my mistakes and had given me a second chance at this school, and that he had not placed me here to fail, I often had to cast away the fear that my choices in my misery last year would follow me here. That at some point, people would see I wasn’t meeting with my groups enough or I didn’t have a set of assignments ready or I wasn’t teaching well enough. All year I’ve had a progressive sense that the longer I am in this profession, the less I know and the less competent I become. Few things suck away your confidence and your purpose, not to mention your self-worth, than a constant sense of accusation.

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And it hit me, today in the car. Every time Beth would mention Satan’s nature as the accuser, I would think in terms of B____. I would think about all the accusations he had to tread each day. It just never occurred to me that I would be subject to that kind of attack myself.

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When I realized that, something in me snapped. I had not been able to feel much lately, even after those words God had given me this weekend. I accepted it was one of those times that I just had to stand on what I know instead of swaying with the lies. Even with the confirmation of my purpose, it was hard to really feel anything. But at the realization that I cannot have victory in God’s Spirit and not have it in every area of my life, and that my sense of accusation was not coming from God, from others, or even from myself, but from the enemy, I suddenly felt like a warrior again. I was mad, but in a good way. I felt wrath, determination, my fingers itching to swing away.

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Dammit, I’m taking my land back!