$$$
A few posts ago, I wrote about my desire to live in such a manner that I could be confident and secure in all areas of my choices and actions. (Some days this desire is stronger than others. Sometimes I feel completely convicted and other days all I want to do is please myself.) Out of all the different areas of my life, the one I’ve been thinking about most lately in the area of my finances.
There has never been a time in my life when I have ever gone without. I have always been blessed with excess. I have no idea what it’s like to be truly hungry. I have no idea what it’s like to need new clothes and not be able to get them. I have no idea what it’s like to not have constant shelter. Looking at the world as a whole, I am rich and I know this.
In spite of my material and financial blessings, I am not at all giving when it comes to my money. I don’t tithe regularly because I don’t want to. I don’t give money to those in my church I know could use it more than I could. I don’t donate money to causes that I know I should be supporting. I would much rather go out and buy a new pair of shoes that I in no way need than to write a check and give it to my church or to an organization. I would rather satisfy my constant hunger for more stuff than to give back to those who do know actual need.
It is almost a trend now, it seems, for people in the church to talk about social issues. We talk about the AIDS crisis in Africa. We talk about the victims of Hurricane Katrina and how New Orleans is still in shambles. We talk about the desolate people scattered around the globe. I have talked about these things. I have acknowledged the need to give. I have spoken out about why we should give. And yet I have given nothing to help battle these broken conditions.
I am incredibly self-addicted. I know there are many people I could benefit by giving what God calls me to give, but I would rather satisfy myself than meet their needs. I realize there is poverty all around the globe, yet I do nothing to fight it. I will go to Starbucks and fork over five bucks on a latte, yet I can’t find the desire to place that money where it will actually make a difference.
Last fall, I took an ethics class. One of the essays we had to read was written by Peter Singer, a well-respected philosopher who is not a Christian. In the essay by Singer, he said that people should be living on as little of their income as they possibly can. They should spend money on what they absolutely need to spend money on and give the rest to people who actually need it. From what my professor said, Singer practices this lifestyle.
I was amazed as I read his essay. First of all, I was shocked that this perspective would come from someone who doesn’t claim to follow Jesus. Singer’s view on finances is so extreme and so focused on others that it would make more sense to me if such a view was arrived at in the light of religious faith. Secondly, as I read what Singer had to say, I thought about how I could never live that way (or how I would never want to live that way). I thought about the fact that I earn the money I receive and should be able to treat myself to nice things. I thought about how people need to reward themselves from time to time. I thought about all these counter-arguments to Singer’s viewpoint and none of them held any true weight because they were entirely self-motivated and unimportant.
I want to learn how to better control my finances. I don’t spend any money that I don’t have, but I certainly don’t spend my money wisely. Sometimes I will look at my bank account, see my balance, and not be able to pinpoint where the money went. It’s a ridiculous cycle, and I know it. I also greatly enjoy it because I get the things I want.
I want to learn how to want different things. I want to learn how to give with grace and joy instead of spiritual obligation. I believe that God would rather me keep my money instead of giving it with a spiteful heart. He certainly has a lot of work to do in me. I think He already knows this, though.
Not What I Hoped For
When I was about five years old, I was a bride for Halloween. I had the white dress, shoes, and even a real veil that my mom borrowed from someone else. Needless to say, I have been planning my wedding for a long time. I used to play dress up in my mother’s wedding gown. I would look at her and my father’s wedding album time and time again. I loved bridal magazines and spent hours with my friends on wedding websites picking out dresses and rings. As a little girl playing dress-up, I never once paused to consider whether or not this dream wedding of mine would ever actually happen. I never stopped and asked myself whether or not the famous prince would come along and give me my fairy tale ending. Now, at twenty, I’ve been wondering this constantly.
I have never been asked on a date. I have never been kissed. I have never known romantic pursuit of any kind. It is incredibly hard for me to even write those things because they cause me a deep sense of shame. I have wondered so often what is wrong with me. I have felt as if I am too much and have also felt that I am not near enough. I have felt ugly, unwanted, unloved, lonely, and incomplete. I have felt as if I have failed as a woman.
Another friend of mine announced her engagement this week. When I found out, I wanted to cry. It was a big struggle to be happy for her. Her news stood as a reminder of the one thing I want so badly yet cannot seem to have. I congratulated her, but through jealous, gritted teeth. I truly am happy for my friends who are married or are in relationships, yet I am envious, too, and wonder at what they take for granted.
I have known the desire for a mate often, but it usually fades after prayer or sleep or both. But the desire this time doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I’m not sure how to explain it except to say that it feels like loss.
I was in a fender-bender when I was on my way to work the other day. I wasn’t hurt, nor was the woman who hit my car. It was a tiny accident, only causing a bit of mechanical damage to my car. Afterwards, my mom said to me how God has taken such good care of me. She pointed out that He has provided me with a job I love, allowed me to attend the university I wanted, and listed other blessings. As she said these things, I agreed that I was indeed blessed, but inside I wondered why He hasn’t yet allowed me the deepest desire of my heart: to know romantic, God-ordained love.
The absence of such love has caused me such immense grief (and also the aforementioned shame). With all the other things I want, I know that if I work for them and prepare for them, I can achieve my desires. But I can’t work for love. I can’t plan for romance. I can’t make it happen.
I am trying to be okay with these things. I am trying to be okay in my aloneness. I am indeed richly blessed with wonderful friendships, all the material wealth I could ever ask for, and a family who loves and supports me as I am, always.
But it seems that as much as I remind myself of all that I have, my mind keeps drifting to what I lack. And I’m not sure how to fix this. For now, it just hurts.
What I Learned From the Velveteen Rabbit
During and since the season of Lent this past year, I have been pondering and wrestling with issues of identity. I have wondered how true identity is found, how it is claimed, and how it can be lived out. I have seen the battle for personal identity pop up around me frequently. I assume this is not a new thing, but one I am just now truly becoming attuned to seeing. For example, I wrote a paper for my poetry class last semester on John Donne. He eventually became an Anglican priest but before that he was quite a womanizer. His poems vary from extremely sensual to beautifully pious. He writes about the woman he loves and God in the same format: with incredible honesty and eloquence. For my paper, I focused on his beautiful poem “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.” I argued that it was a poem all about identity, about the battle between the worldly and the divine, and that the themes Donne explored in that particular piece mirrored his own life.
I have thought about identity as I’ve considered American culture. Americans are so inundated with advertisements. There are ads everywhere we look, selling everything from clothes to cars to bodies. As I stopped to truly consider what it was these ads were trying to sell, I found it all so very silly. How many women truly resemble the 5′9”, rail-thin, airbrushed models who appear in magazines? How many people really need another *insert product of choice here*? Yet I buy into these ads. I see them, and I want what I see.
Like the images expressed in John Donne’s poetry, there is this struggle (for me, at least) between the secular and the sacred. Coming from a lifelong stint in church, it is easy for me to divide life into two halves, like boys and girls at a middle school dance: the holy is on one side, the worldly is on the other. I think part of growing up, or at least maturing spiritually, is realizing that the holy is everywhere, and is present even in the places and people and art that seem the furthest thing from sacred.
Not only do I struggle with a spiritual identity, there is also an ever-present struggle for cultural identity. Like I said, I buy into the ads I see. I subscribe to way more magazines than I probably should and I find myself wanting to resemble these well-dressed, perfectly coiffed women. When I do not, there is a twinge of disappoint because I was hoping my identity would parallel that of those idyllic models.
As I have entertained thoughts on identity and wholeness, I reread something last week that I feel talks about the issue of identity and being real better than anything else I have encountered on the subject. It is an excerpt from Margery Williams’ famous children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit:
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
”Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be unlovable, except to people who don’t understand.”
I love this passage so much because I find it so very true. Being real, finding one’s true identity, is not an immediate thing. It is a slow evolution, and, like the Skin Horse pointed out, once you have fully evolved you do not look how you did when you first started out on your journey. The outside will have changed because the inside will have changed first.
I believe that every person has this image in their head of the ideal man or woman, this ideal self. I also believe that it is incredibly important to think about what has shaped this ideal. I have to ask myself if I want to be this ideal woman because she is someone who I believe God created me to be or if I want to be this ideal woman because she would get a lot of worldly acclaim and applause. I have to examine what has shaped my ideals.
Without thinking too much about it, I realize that spirituality has shaped my ideal self very little. To be honest, thinking about the ideal Christian woman makes me think of the famous Proverbs 32 woman. Reading that passage of Scripture, I am overwhelmed. She does everything and seems to do it perfectly. I would rather be like the women I see in Vogue, with their tans, summer houses, designer wardrobes, and aristocracy. My identity has been so very wrapped up in culture and what that culture finds acceptable.
I want to be real, however. I want to be the person I was actually created to be, not the composite in my head. I want to find my identity in Christ’s redemption and grace, not in momentary trinkets. Like the velveteen rabbit found out, being real is a long process. It will sometimes hurt. Being real will often involve confronting old wounds and how those wounds have shaped us. It will involve stripping off the false layers and revealing the mess that might be underneath them.
I think I would rather be real, deal with my wounds, and find my identity in Jesus rather than hiding the wounds with momentary possessions and affection. To once again quote the wise Skin Horse, once a person is real, he or she cannot be unlovable, except to those people who do not understand. The world is full of people who do not and will not understand. Perhaps those people are the ones who are not real at all.
Tiny Voices
These past few months have contained some of the most challenging moments I have experienced so far in my two decades of life. I have been knee-deep in worry about so many different things. I have dealt with transferring to a new university and adjusting to the large amount of work and time that such a transfer required. I have dealt with health scares, my own and others’ close to me. I have dealt with old wounds and have been sad and frustrated when the scars seem just as tender now as the moments when I received the blows. Life has been hard in 2008 and I have found myself getting rather weary.
There have been moments this past year, especially during the season of Lent, when I have felt God’s presence so overwhelmingly. Then there have been moments when I have been angry and brokenhearted that He wasn’t answering my prayers the way I wanted him to. There have also been moments when I have wondered if He truly cares about my wounds, if He can truly heal them and if He’s actually trying. I am tired of walking around with the baggage those wounds have left. I am tired of just how deeply I have allowed my wounds to define my life over the past few years.
My heart has been longing for many things lately. I have longed for rest, wisdom, energy, healing, romance, peace, and courage. Though I have longed for these things, I feel as if I’ve received few of them.
This weekend, my number one longing has been a partner, preferably a male one who comes holding a bouquet of gerbera daisies and an emerald-cut diamond ring. As a little girl and teenager, I fantasized about my perfect wedding. My special day has been fully planned so many times, down to the very small details, such as the font for the wedding reception napkins. I am the girl who played dress up in her mother’s wedding dress, loved to look at bridal magazines, and the girl who has had a mental list of revolving bridesmaids rolling around in her head for years.
I hope and pray for a lot of things, but the deepest desire of my heart is to be pursued by someone who loves me, who will fight for me, and who will be my best friend. Now, I find myself fantasizing about staying in and watching a movie with this man and not so much about what color the flower girl dresses should be. I am starting to think more about grocery shopping and combining CD collections and less about tulle and bouquets. Basically, now I long for a marriage and not just for a wedding.
Sometimes it feels as if there is this part of me that isn’t completely whole because I’ve yet to meet my mate. Other times there is a part of me who is confident there is no mate to meet. I have often felt guilty for this particular longing and have punished myself for thinking that God isn’t enough. I know that God loves me, but I have longed for something tangible and physical. I have to remember that God created and ordained marriage. He created Eve so Adam would not be alone in the world.
These thoughts on marriage and pursuit have been extra-heavy this weekend. Almost every single one of my friends is either married, in a serious relationship, dating, or has some sort of interest. It is always hard to keep these longings at bay, but it is even harder when I hear my friends talk about their relationships and see how they take for granted things I have never, ever had.
Tonight I was feeling overwhelmed and thoughtful, weary and inadequate. In spite of the massive amount of thoughts and worries mixing around in my head, it was as if I heard this inner voice tell me to look up Isaiah 46:3. I did so and started reading:
“Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all you who remain of the house of Israel,
you whom I have upheld since you were conceived,
and have carried since your birth.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”
I immediately wept and read those particular verses again and again. I was amazed at how God had spoken to me and knew for certain that it was indeed His voice.
These declarations, that God has made me, carries me, sustains me, and rescues me…they match my current battles so perfectly. I needed so desperately to be reminded that I am a created being, someone made in the image of God with a specific purpose and life. I needed to be reminded that my Creator carries me when I can’t walk on my own two feet anymore. I needed to be reminded that I am always sustained by Him, even when I don’t always trust that. And I needed to be reminded that God does indeed rescue His people. He is all about rescue and restoration.
I need to be rescued from my worries and fears. I need to be rescued from my lust and pride. My heart so badly needs restoration, especially after the beating it’s taken these last few months.
I am awed and grateful for these words in Isaiah that remind me and promise me so much. God truly is in the moments where we don’t expect to find Him.
