Making it Work

I got engaged about a week ago. It’s still new and delicious, but because life is real and keeps going, and we’re on a tight timeline, the Fiance and I have already planned about 75% of the wedding. (!)

An unexpected side effect of this life change is that, when I explain why I have a beautifully sparkly ring on my left hand, other people are more willing than normal to tell me about their own love lives. It’s been somewhat of a mixed bag. My parents are still together, happily so, and a lot of my friends growing up came from stable homes. But among my social circle from the last week and a half, the trend is overwhelmingly different: married twice, now divorced and single; two kids by first marriage, divorced, with a boyfriend; just married, future uncertain; single, exploring options on Tinder.

The Fiance and I have been reading “The Meaning of Marriage”, by Tim and Kathy Keller. I just finished the chapter on the difference between a consumer relationship and a covenental one. Consumer relationships exist as long as both parties are happy and receiving goods or services (or sex, or emotional fulfillment) that are to their liking; when conditions change and you are no longer pleased with the relationship, it ends, one way or another. As the Kellers point out, this is entirely appropriate in many contexts (did the plumber actually fix the sink? your landlord raised the rent?) but marriage, biblically speaking, is something different.

Marriage, according to the Bible, is a covenant — a solemn vow between two parties that they will keep their word regardless of changing conditions, emotions, or circumstances. When things get tough, or one party isn’t “feeling it” anymore, covenants act as a safeguard for the relationship: you promised to stick it out, so do it. Act loving and married, even if you don’t feel like it. American society still seems to view the parent/child relationship as covenental (you’re stuck with each other, unless one party outright disowns the other) but marriage…that has largely slipped into a consumeristic view, the Kellers argue.

My little poll seems to agree.

And, for myself, on the brink of such a life-changing threshold, watching so many people around me end up breaking their vows is very sobering.

So today, it was a sweet breath of fresh air to hear another person at work say she’d been married for 30 years, that it was hard at times, but you make it work.

It is sweet to see my sister, deeply happy, loving and respecting her husband of (almost three!??) years; sweeter still to see my parents, working hard to know each other better and go deeper in the third decade of their relationship.

And it is sweetest of all, to know Jesus; to know His unchanging, inescapable love. He is the original Covenant-Maker, and the best Covenant-Keeper.

God is still at work, friends. He is sustaining marriages everywhere. And if you’re reading this, and you’ve made marriage vows, and it’s hard, let me encourage you (weird as this may be coming from a starry eyed engaged lady) God can give you the power and the strength to act as if you respected your husband. As if you loved your wife. As if the biggest problem in your marriage was your own selfishness, and not his. God often works best in times like these, where we are weakest and most incapable.

This is not to say divorce is always wrong; there is strong Biblical evidence that sometimes divorce is godly and appropriate.

But if you’re married, and it’s not one of those few “divorce is biblically sanctioned” situations — please. Lean into Jesus. Ask Him for help. Stick it out.

He will not fail you or forsake you.

And by His sustaining grace and power, I believe the Fiance and I will be able to make it work.

 

City living, day 223

It’s been long enough that some of the honeymoon feelings have worn off. The delicious novelty is gone, and I’ve settled into an easy familiarity, beginning to complain about commutes and distances (starting to sound vaguely like I did as a suburbanite — which is a little alarming!)

We’ve had gunshots, sirens, people smoking substances that maybe shouldn’t be legal in our stairwell.

I’m facing a summer full of road trips and adventures in new places!

But today, I walked to my favorite bakery (three blocks away) and I thought….maybe this is the last time for a while. I’m going to miss the bakery while I’m on the road.

So today, in the face of an impending change, I’m resolved to stop and enjoy each moment I still have in this crazy, wonderful city for exactly what it is, and not waste it.

Does loving Jesus make you a nerd?

I go back and forth on this “nerd” label. I know (and love!) some people who self-identify as nerds. I myself am quite passionate — yes, to the level of nerdiness — about certain subjects. And, sometimes I meet people who are ridiculously nerdy about things I don’t understand or enjoy — which usually means I end up avoiding them, because their nerdiness makes me really uncomfortable.

I think it’s precisely because I don’t want others to perceive me the way I perceive this last camp of people (annoyingly obsessed with something I can’t stand) that I resist the label “nerd”.

But a while ago, I started to think about why we have these deep, life-forming interests — where do they come from ultimately? Why?

And how do you think about nerdiness as a Christian? About other nerds?

And then, this question: does loving Jesus make you a nerd?

Loving Jesus does change you. Not that everyone who loves Jesus necessarily becomes a ministry/church nerd (granted, it’s a great goal), and with a life of consistent Christian discipleship, He eventually makes us into Jesus nerds.

But on a different level, your profound love for Him should start to change you. To give you true satisfaction and open your eyes to see and love many things in this world of His. And to love them deeply, passionately, intensely. He makes you alive to be more like Him, and to love more in His world.

And… to love the people in His world.

Including those nerds who are TOTALLY into something I don’t get.

I’m still trying to untie that knot in my stomach that forms whenever someone else finds intense delight in something I judge pointless, ordinary, or boring.

But I could start by trusting the Lord, and seeing their delight as a reflection of His image in them.

And that would probably help a lot.

Tasty gospel tidbits

More sermon gleanings. Galatians 5:1-15 deals with the freedom we have in Christ, and why and how to stand your ground. So many things want to take away our freedom, but in Christ, we never have to go back to slavery!

Relying on your performance results in slavery to the fear of losing God’s approval. (Which is silly, because nothing can make us lose God’s approval.)

How would you live (sing, laugh, deal with uncertainty….) knowing that God is for you 100%, and that His purposes are good and unthwartable?

In Jesus, our record is Jesus’s record. One day, our perfect righteousness — through Him — will be fully displayed. That’s glory right there, folks. Biblical hope is a confident expectation, a powerful assurance of God and His promise-keeping. Hope isn’t worrying, stressing, or striving, it’s eagerly waiting with expectant confidence, because our Savior King is coming. Wait well.

Point 3 was to embrace the offense of the cross. We aren’t good people; we need saving. There’s only one way to heaven — Jesus. He is our only ultimate hope. Naturally, this is pretty offensive to our pride, but we need to embrace this truth if we want to cultivate freedom from our natural, gross, disgusting, all-encompassing pride.

In Christ, we are also free to starve our fleshly desires, and to serve others instead.

Practically speaking, we are free to overflow in love and practical consideration for each other — roomies, neighbors, community members, family, friends — as an overflow of God’s love for us. Only the gospel can make people like that.

And, because it’s still so good – this week’s corporate confession:

 

Gracious God,

We confess that we often approach You out of duty rather than love.

We often choose self-reliant slavery rather than standing in Your freedom.

We do not wait eagerly for you. We can be offended by the offense of the cross.

We use our freedom for the flesh, rather than for loving others.

So, we fly to you for forgiveness, refuge, renewed strength and joy.

Forgive all our sin, known and unknown. Help us to never return to it.

In your great mercy, help us to never lose sight of You as our greatest Treasure.

Help us know that we only truly live, when we live with You.

Hold us fast, in your overflowing love, and never let us go.

We are Yours by grace and grace alone. In Jesus name, amen.

–Downtown Cornerstone Church, 20 March 2016, pastor Adam Sinnett.

Thankfulness, humility, and hilarity

Happy New Year, blog!

 

Today I had coffee with a new friend. We’ve only known each other for about a month or two, but she’s one of those: the kind you know will be a keeper, almost from the start.

 

We chatted of many things: languages, churches, the hand of God at work in her life and mine. And we laughed about the way He rewrites your life plans. She told me her past self’s idea of where she would be today; I (having recently come across a life plan for age 35 that I wrote at 19) shared my own stories of life’s trajectories, and their changed course. It was hilarious! I was so far off the mark — and that’s a good thing, too. I can’t imagine being any place but here in my life right now. We spent a solid five or ten minutes being thankful that God knows better than we do, that He writes a better future for us than we could ourselves. And, thankful too that He shows us what’s ahead in small, merciful steps.

 

Where will I be five years from now? I have no earthly idea.

 

But maybe I should make a guess — so that I can laugh about it later!

Fruit Flies gone Meta

This post is one of those where I go very meta. Just saying.

We’ve had several fruit fly explosions in our kitchen over the last couple weeks. In our attempt to eat plenty of fruits and veggies, we’ve also somehow managed to attract about a zillion of the little plump, flying insects.

What’s most impressive to me is how fast they multiply. One day you have one, maybe two, acting all innocent. And BAM! the next day there are whole swarms, floating up into your face, exploding in your kitchen. When one inevitably drowns in your beer….well, that’s when it gets personal.

By day 3 (when you’ve finally managed to set a trap) there are 20 or so, floating dead in the trap, and somehow there are still half a dozen renegades in the kitchen, bathroom, living room.

Some things are still beyond me. At least we’re bigger than them.

It makes me remember junior high, when I first encountered the Scientific Method, and some of the earliest theories it produced. Maggots spontaneously generated from rotting meat has, by now, been definitively disproved, but there are days I think it explains our situation pretty well.

It makes me think of sin, too. Each individual sin isn’t that large, or even that ugly (at least, to us, when we’re in the middle of it). But if you don’t take a good hard look at that plump little body and elegant set of wings, and see it for what it truly is — insectoid, parasitic, thieving, life-destroying — it will very quickly multiply out of control.

Far better to smack one or two, when you don’t mind them so much, and avoid the explosion later.

Meta enough for you? 🙂

Please don’t stop the discourse!

We’ve been listening to the Pitch Perfect soundtrack at work lately. One of the songs (undoubtedly a cover, as they all are) goes like this:

“Please don’t stop the, please don’t stop the music!”

I’ve been almost overwhelmed lately at the sheer number of ideas flowing towards me. So many people with thoughts, opinions, life experiences. Real hurts and real passions.

And also real disagreements.

I just wanted to go on record to say I don’t mind. Yes, there are often times when I feel attacked, overwhelmed. But I think it’s far more important that we get these ideas out, and let them go fisticuffs with each other, than that we simply drift along.

There’s a proverb like that. Prov 27:17 in fact (this is the NASB).

Iron sharpens iron, / So one man sharpens another.

It’s not comfortable. But if you think life is about comfort, then you’ve obviously been living under a rock and, eventually, reality will catch up with you. And it will be hard, but you’ll look back on it, and, if your experience is at all like mine, the character growth will be totally worth it.

So, as difficult and charged as these discussions can be, let’s keep having them.

Melinda

PS: I have a lot of thoughts about what a healthy discourse/disagreement looks like, but that will have to wait for another post…

PS 2: feel free to jump in the comments below. Let’s do this.