Postcard from 1952 Pt. 2

Somehow, last night's tired, stumbling blog post ended up getting quite a few views and support, more than I'd thought. While I'm not entirely sure how that happened, there are no complaints. Bring on the pressure of making this sequel a good one!

You'd think that I'd learn from previous experience, but apparently I have to go through a trial several times before I learn that... well... it's a trial. Today I had the same meltdown all over again about God's promises and how much I think I DON'T want them. Inside, I know I do. But, as our wise women's pastor told me, as soon as God gives you a promise, you have to immediately give it back to Him and let Him do what He wants.

That's hard. My reasoning is that God gave me the damn thing in the first place, and so I have a right to it! I have a right to clutch it tightly, I have a right to show it off as much as I want, and I have a right to know every single detail of how it will happen. In fact, I have a right to MAKE it happen myself.

Have you noticed that God's reasoning is a lot different than ours?

His plans to make it happen are a lot different than ours as well. Inserting once more the most recent example of the promises God has made about my marriage, I would have never imagined that marriage would be so hard before the marriage even happens. I always thought God just crashes two people together and bam, that's it. Let the problems commence once everything is official. Who knew problems happened before the dang thing??

With all this trouble of determining who's who and handing God back the dream He gave me in the first place, I have to wonder--is this normal? Do all couples go through the same pain of handing their dreams and each other to God? Why must it be that way?

And it makes me wonder about their stories. Not just the story of the marriage, but the story before the wedding too. God has told me that our (meaning my husband and I) story doesn't begin on a date or a proposal or the wedding day. Our story is happening right now at this very moment. He will use those, yes, but He will also use our frustrations and hurt and ranting blog posts that happen before AND after the wedding day. I believe that the Lord wants to use the ugly and beautiful parts of our story to inspire and restore hope, trust, and childlike faith in His promises and faithfulness.

It's just that... well, I'm in just as much need of all that stuff as the people who will hear our story one day. And it's frustrating not knowing what else the Lord has in mind. I feel I have a good enough testimony--just tell the man my ring size already, Lord.

Apparently, God wants to keep adding more and more stuff, with no end in sight right now. Great.

In Living Waters, there is a certain time where we bunch up into assigned small groups and just talk and pray together. During my time to share, I talked about Hannah's conversation with God and how angry it made me. One of the small group leaders mentioned that she once had a similar meltdown to mine. She didn't understand it until she realized it was because she was afraid to trust God. She was afraid of having her hopes be so high, because it puts so much of you at stake and you could truly, painfully, mercilessly, fall.

And that's exactly it. I'm excited for what God has for me, but the very specific promises I refuse to believe. That, or I twist my fingers in my ears, wondering if I heard right or wrong. I'm so afraid of hearing God wrong, because I don't want to get my hopes high all over again. I don't want to crash and burn once more. I don't want my heart to be at risk. I've asked God for confirmation over and over, and I don't receive it because I've gotten so much confirmation yet I ask for more. Because I'm so afraid it's not God and that a lie has slipped in.

Not only that, but I'm afraid of losing my childlike faith all over again. It's a hard thing to attain, yet so easy to lose hold of. I used to be so good at it. I used to be great at having the innocent trust of, "Okay, God's got this, He'll protect me, He won't let anything hurt me, I completely surrender."

I miss having that mindset. I want it back. And yet it's so immensely difficult, because I realize now that God is more interested in our holiness than our current happiness. He wants us to be happy, but it's not something He just gives out all the time.

And so now an explanation of the title. I've mentioned Explosions in the Sky before, one of my favorite bands. There is a certain song called... you guessed it... Postcard from 1952. And I immediately loved it from the start. I had a hard time relating to it at first, but it eventually became incredibly meaningful.

See, the 50's were the years before the sexual revolution. A simpler and less complicated time before everything started getting so screwed up. And I miss the time in my life when things were easier and not hurtful, before the sexual revolution, before everything got messy and before I started questioning God's goodness.

Postcard from 1952 is what that childlike faith sounds like to me.

Postcard from 1952 Pt. 1

So my friend, Hannah, absolutely turned my world upside-down a couple of weeks ago.

Okay, maybe she shouldn't get all the credit. God used her to absolutely turn my world upside-down a couple of weeks ago. How did this come about, you ask? (Or maybe you didn't--in any case, I'm going to answer.)

Hannah texted me, asking "Have you ever had one of those moments where you're doing your own thing, minding your own business and then God pops in and is all like 'Heeeyy, let me tell you something deep and profound,' and you're all 'Oh, coo--wait, what?'"
Yep. I told her so, and asked what had happened.

It went along the lines of this...

Hannah: Lalala, doodidoodidoo
God: Hey, 'sup.
Hannah: Oh, hey God! What're you doing here?
God: I just came to tell you that every word out of my mouth is a promise.
Hannah: Oh. Wait, what?
God: Yup. So everything I have ever told you, even when you were itty bitty baby? Totally fulfilling that.
Hannah: But. Wait. What about--
God: Yes.
Hannah: And--
God: Yep.
Hannah: How about--
God: Everything.
Hannah *being bratty*: What if I don't know it's you?
God: Am I degrading?
Hannah: No.
God: Do I go against anything I have previously said?
Hannah: No.
God: Am I cruel or mean?
Hannah: No. (God was wise to have Hannah relate this to me instead of asking me Himself, because it would've been too tempting to say something... unfavorable.)
God: If someone or something tells you some word claiming to be me, and they are even just slightly one of those things, it's not me.
Hannah: Oh.
God: I'm going to go and let you process that for awhile.
Hannah: .........Well, shoot.

So she tells me all this over text. I received it during a break at work. And at first I thought it was a funny conversation. I was on the verge of lightly teasing her about it. But after rereading it several times and processing it for a while, I started to get angry. Really angry. Furious, actually. And it was so strange because I couldn't figure out why I was stomping around the workplace in a blind rage, slamming things around and fighting with God under my breath. It even got to the point where, in a moment when I was alone, I said out loud, "Lord, you don't know what I want! You don't know me!" I literally said this to my Maker! How retarded is that?

Once I become angry, it's always tempting to hold on to that anger and let it consume me. Fortunately, I've realized that probably isn't the best thing to do and physically stopped everything I was doing, just to ask the Lord what the heck was going on. Boy, He sure was happy I asked.

I know God has promised me things. He's promised me much, but three certain things have been really laid on my heart lately, and they immediately came into mind: the promise I would be a trailblazer, that I would be a wife, and that I would be a mother.

I've mentioned the trailblazer thing before, and so far have no complaints. I LOVE the fact that God has called that to be one of many facets of my identity in Him.

Being a mother is the most recent thing He's called me to be (this happened maybe a couple of weeks ago, I believe). This is huge and vastly uncomfortable, being someone who only likes kids until they start making loud noises. Babies scare me when they are fresh into the world and have no control over their bodies and can't communicate in ways besides crying. I am an awkwardly maternal woman--I'll have to work at it. Luckily, that's something I don't have to worry about for a while. With great relief, I am granted permission to cross that bridge later.

After all this musing and blogging over the past year about marriage, I think you know that being a wife is the calling I am most concerned with at the moment. There are times when I can't wait, and there are times when I wish I could rip this calling from inside of me and fling it off a cliff. I hate that God gave me that calling so early, because it makes me paranoid. It makes me wonder, "Is this the guy? What about this other guy? Or him? Does what he just said mean anything? This person just did something nice, does that mean something? Am I focusing on the wrong person?" I would not have wished that on myself, or really, anyone. It's exhausting. It's awful. It's terrifying.

And it makes me have to lean on God all the more.

Here's the thing. I have talked with God countless times about my marriage and prayed over it and my husband like you wouldn't believe. And I feel He has specifically told me certain things about my marriage and my husband. I feel He has given me promises and that He wants to fulfill them.

He told me a good portion of these promises last year. I wrote them down. I reread them. I got excited. I tried to help out.

And I crashed and burned. This calling on my life, this promise that stirred my heart, ended up tearing my heart instead. And I was devastated. I questioned God's goodness, and I wondered if I'd heard Him wrong, and if I had heard Him at all. And that was the biggest loss, the loss of childlike faith. The trust. I definitely trusted God--I just didn't trust myself to hear Him right. Honestly, I still don't sometimes. I know I can hear Him well because I hear things for other people often. But when it comes to hearing Him for myself, I get suspicious and doubtful and cynical. Especially if God's promise sounds way too good to be true. Especially if it's the same promise I'd heard before. And ESPECIALLY if it's the same promise I've heard before that sounds way too good to be true.

"Sometimes your calling can interfere with your relationship with the one who called you," one of my Facebook friends observed at the beginning of this year. And it's really true. In the Message version of Galatians 3, it says:

"Only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you can perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing?

...Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you?"

Ouch.

I will be the first to say that I am SO guilty of trying to perfect what God has for me. Like I said, I just wish He wouldn't tell me so soon... but then, I guess I wouldn't learn to trust and sit tight.

Anyways, God showed me why I was angry, so I got what I asked for. I was still mad for the rest of the day, though.

I think a lot of that had to do with slight disappointment and sheer frustration. There's a nice young man who I'm friends with, one of the few nice guys I know outside of church. Really, he's super nice. He frequently asks how I'm doing, and we've talked a bit about similar interests and our churches and God. And I admit it's been tempting to like him. It's really tempting to get my heart involved. You wouldn't believe how much my interest peaked after he told me he's twenty--less than a year older than me.

This didn't faze me even with Living Waters; we aren't allowed to begin a dating relationship while in it, but I'm not much of a dater anyways so that's not a huge deal.

It's that darn God of mine that's getting in the way. I'll never forget that conversation the Lord and I had about this young man.

"Hey, God... so, that calling about having a husband... what about him?"
"Who, him? Oh, I know him well. Nice young man. Yeah, no."
"Seriously? Come on, man. He's twenty, he's cute, he's nice, he knows you, my parents know him, he has a good job... and he's twenty."
"Duly noted."
"Good. It would make a lot of sense if we got married."
"You're right. It WOULD make sense."
"Alright, thanks God!"
"...which is why he's not the guy for you."

I was not pleased. That conversation happened not too long before Hannah's conversation about promises, so that was kind of like poking a fresh bruise. 

Okay, this is getting pretty long and I'm kind of exhausted. So I'll finish up tomorrow.

To be continued...