Every few years, life seems to pick up and move from place to place, people to people. When I left DC for Louisville, I went with only a crystal clear view of the few steps laid ahead. Seminary was good and right for me to pursue as a healthy single young professional, driven by the conviction that nothing would be more profitable than to spend the dwindling last decades of my life working to build up the church for Christ our bridegroom who is coming sooner than we know it.
The rest of the path ran ahead of me into a fog so firm that only the deepest conviction of a God sovereign and wise would disclose to my mind's eye the stones that he had already laid out for me amidst the fog, before the foundation of the world. Whatever insignificant form it would take, I knew the substance of my life would necessarily and increasingly revolve around people and the reality of God made known through his Word. This had me packing my bags with confident joy, which I'm convinced is bred from clarity to see God.
And now having moved even from Louisville, I wanted to reflect a bit on truth, learning, life lived before God in that season.
God's gifts are sweetest to receive when you've no need for them. In January 2018, a tall freckled Texan with the kindest face asked me to dinner. Man, was he a nervous sight to behold. And yet, I was weirdly intrigued by his confident kindness and steadiness. Our friendship ripened quickly through to engagement and the beginning of our marriage by the end of that year.
They say that marriages are healthiest and happiest when each spouse is first satisfied in God. In our first year, I can only triple underline this sentiment. As Paul demonstrated for us, Christians are to know how to be brought low and how to abound (Philippians 4:12). In facing plenty and hunger, there is a rising up above our good earthly needs that gives life in Christ the thrill of contentment. God was kind to Jeremy and me in our desire for marriage, to faithfully walk us through seasons feeling abundance and need. When "need" was removed from our understanding of married status, he granted us our friendship, that we'd know a purer gratitude and gladness in one another.
The Father's heart is for life to flourish. Soon after we married, Jeremy and I were excited to find out that I was pregnant. We got to spend one sweet month enjoying the life God had begun through us. At only 9 weeks, we lost our sweet baby Jedidiah.
Miscarriage is a stark and constant reminder that death reigns in this world, and that it is to be hated. In grieving, I came to feel a few distinct sorrows related to baby's death. One grief certainly came from the loss of the child we loved. Loss will always bring lament. But another distinct sorrow bled out of my newly contoured mother's heart. I had never known love for another in quite the way God afforded me to love the baby who made me his mama. I was fashioned as his mom to give and desire life for him. I hate death for snuffing out the life that was supposed to flourish.
And so God granted me to better know his heart in this way. After laying out his covenant with his people, God unmistakably exhorted, "Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live..." (Deuteronomy 30:19). Oh how God loves his children and wants them to flourish. How beautiful he is that this is true!
Grief is a funny friend. When death
touches you, grief must follow. When death chokes out the life of a person who
once lived, our souls' alarms must go off to announce the egregious, unnatural,
violent theft that has just occurred. Grief swells up from caverns we don't
know exist in us until there is so bold an offense to violate their depths. It
cannot be computed, and it cannot be expressed, but perhaps in groans.
It's a funny friend because it comes when
it wants, and to remind you to maintain with all your being in the midst of the
living, that death is wrong. Grief is a funny friend because it visits you in
the midst of life being lived on, to remind you that to live in a world where
death reigns is no paradise at all.
I am such a creature, and that is good. Perhaps it's one's growing
friendship with sin, sting, and sorrow that drives her to the sentiments of
King Solomon. All is vanity. What height or pain or facet of human experience
has not been seen by the sun? And when the waves of grief draw you in to
explore the ocean of human emotions that God in his wisdom has made available
to man, what undiscovered specimen will you find?
In joy and sorrow, I am such a creature,
partaking in the episodes of life God has crafted for his people to live. I
have no original ideas or insights to offer my Maker who designed human experience
to expose the expiration of matter's intrinsic worth and to reveal himself in
splendor. So in loss and gain, ambition and obedience, I know my place and the
freedom to live unto him.
My Christian life must be lived in the
world. So if God has
said, "Go," and if he has said, "Make disciples of all
nations," then there honestly is very little to argue with. I am eager to
continue to see gospel as the power of God to save, particularly in places
where the message of the gospel is far from assumed. Lord willing, the days we
spend in the season to come will smell sweetly of an easy and abandoned
obedience.
