The Valley

Today I discovered what is wrong with my life. For 17 of my 22 years I have operated on a school schedule. This presents a problem to my graduated self. Exactly how does one function without a Christmas break that lasts six weeks? I am used to skipping classes and getting work done the hour before the deadline. Not so in "the real world". I am 22 years old and I am $19,926 in debt. My "real world" contains flat tires, phone bills, monthly rent, computers that crash, and an average of 71.25 work hours per week. This work thing also presents a problem. I rather enjoy such things as friends, sleep, and laughter, but I find they have taken a significant blow in light of my crazy work schedule.

So how does one cope? With many secret tears. But the truth I have been bumping into consistently is that my God is faithful to renew His glorious mercies each morning. One of my favorite names of God is the Hebrew name El Roi, meaning the God who sees. What a comfort that is to me! He sees my struggle and understands my pain. He knows how my heart longs for freedom. He created me to be this way. To rejoice in the things I rejoice in and to hurt over the things I hurt for.

He is teaching me more and more about myself these days. And really what I'm discovering most is that I am a bundle of inconsistencies:
I don't like nuts in my chocolate but I crave peanut m&m's.
I get phone phobia.
I judge books by their covers.
I am always re-decorating.
Showers rejuvenate me.
A cup of tea can solve almost any problem.
I am fiercely independent but secretly I need affirmation.
I hate driving.
I love to fly.
The only beverage I like to put ice in is a glass of coke with a straw.
Clutter drives me crazy but my room is usually a mess.
Cleaning my room is therapeutic for me.
I will only steal pens from hotels if they are clicky pens.
When my television is on it means I need to get work done.
Sometimes I wish I had mono so I could sleep for a month.
Always I wish there were more hours in the day.
I love to lead, but more, I love to be led.
I feel beautiful in a sweatshirt with fancy earrings.
I hate make-up but am convinced I need it.
People wear me out but I need to be around them in order to function.
I don't want to be high maintenance so I will work twice as hard to make you think I'm not.
I need to relax so much that sometimes I get anxious about how I'm not resting.
I make less money than a first year teacher, but my favorite thing to do is buy people gifts.
I love to give hospitality and have trouble receiving it.
I pick grocery stores based on the number of old men that shop there.

That's me right now. Some of it won't ever change, some of it will. Yet no matter how long that list gets, the one constant will be that I am a well-loved daughter of the King. Even in the midst of my "twenty-something quarter-life crisis" my God is El Roi, ever present and ever seeing.

I've been living this entire year in Harrisonburg in a place known as "the Shenandoah Valley." It's a wonderful place full of coffee shops and crystal meth labs, amish families and college students who wear sweatpants and ugg boots. Most people who live here shorten "Shenandoah Valley" and refer to it as "the Valley." The irony of this name didn't hit me until recently. Doesn't the Lord lead us through spiritual valleys? For so long my favorite passage of Scripture was Hosea 2 where the Lord speaks of leading His beloved through the desert and turning "the valley of Achor" (meaning the valley of trouble) into a "door of hope." How interesting that the Lord would choose this year of transition and uncertainty to literally and figuratively place me in "the valley".

Mostly this year I've tried hard to resist the fact that I am in a valley. I don't want to be a failure. I don't want to be so spiritually immature that the Lord has to bring me through another valley in order to get my attention. But really? That is not how He works. His blessing and even more, His presence, is not dependent on my performance or lack thereof. That's what it means that He is Sovereign. Paige Brown of Reformed University Fellowship puts it well,

Can God be any less good to me on the average Tuesday morning than he was on that monumental Friday afternoon when he hung on a cross in my place? The answer is a resounding no. God will not be less good to me tomorrow either, because God cannot be less good to me. His goodness is not the effect of his disposition but the essence of his person--not an attitude but an attribute.

If His goodness is an attribute then it is always present, even in the valleys of life and Harrisonburg. Why should I then be ashamed to be anything less than I am? He knows my failures and flaws and has promised to continue the work of His goodness in me and "carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6). Is it always peaches and cream? Heck no! But the wonder of it all is that I get to learn what it looks like to allow my heart to ache with the hope of restoration and at the same time to let my actions and responses flow with the beauty of grace. I don't always know what I will do with the rest of my life, and I don't always know how to avoid getting burnt out, but one thing I do know: He is all that I need and He is more than enough.

Love and Weddings

Annie was the perfect bride. Her dress, made in Germany, was absolutely stunning. She wore little white flowers in her hair and carried a bouquet of white and red roses. Her man? A Navy lieutenant fully decked out in his crisp white uniform. As they were leaving the church after the ceremony, the couple walked through an Arch of Swords. It was just like a movie: romantic and beautiful.

I'm always surprised when I cry at weddings because I know the drill. I've attended slightly less than 278 (yeah, I went to CNU). But watching Annie dance with the man of her dreams just naturally caused tears to well up. I was realizing that the girl I "grew up with" for three years of college was now someone's wife. She even had our favorite sonnet read at the ceremony:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-William Shakespeare

I love this poem because I memorized it in my favorite class for my favorite teacher in high school. But I also love it because it's so real. Shakespeare spells out for us exactly what love is and is not. It does not change when it discovers a fault or seek to transform the other by removing annoying habits. Those are two things women are good at. We get these insecurities and it's like the only way we know how to hold on is to press in harder. That's why we get a reputation for "nagging". We know what it is we want so we try overly hard to get it. That's why Sara Groves describes grace as "an invitation to be beautiful." As we give grace to those who don't give us exactly what we want from them, we become beautiful and more like the Lord. A woman who gives grace is not only beautiful, but loving. Her love is an "ever fixed mark" because it comes out of an overabundance of the love she is receiving from her Father God. That's the kind of love I want to give; the kind that is beautiful, selfless and unbridled by time or age.

My prayer is that maybe one day the Lord will transform me into that kind of woman- who is clothed with a gracious love and laughs at the days to come.

In the meantime, after all of my tears and celebration tonight, my wallet and I are thankful to announce that the wedding season has ended- at least for this year. My boyfriend will be happy to announce that I did not catch the bouquet, in fact I screamed and backed away as it fell to my feet. Ah yes, free and easy down the road I go...

Until next spring and the next batch of CNU engagements.