Just like in the bible...

I don’t want to be like…

For the last several years, I’d say at least since 2007, I could compare myself with someone in the bible. Contrary to what you may be thinking, it isn’t one of the famous strong-willed heroines they always preach to women about. It’s actually a man. Don’t laugh. His name is Jonah. Know him? He’s famous for being told to go and do an important mission to help point a dangerous city in the right direction, but instead, he wussed out and hopped on the next boat to somewhere else. God, however, wasn’t going to let his missionary slip through his fingers that easily. He sent a storm to rock the boat and when Jonah figured out that the only way to stop it was to jump overboard, a giant fish swallowed him. Of course, the fish didn’t digest him. He sat stagnant in its guts until it either <puked him back out> or <blew him out through its blowhole> onto the shore… right near the town where Jonah was supposed to be headed in the first place. Your sins will find you out, I guess.

Well, not too much unlike Jonah, I was raised and instructed as a Christian to go and be a good Christian by walking my talk and sharing my faith and not straying off to the seven seas to go places I wasn’t told to go. Unfortunately, I was weak and selfish and wound up either a) feeling like I didn’t deserve the riches of God’s kingdom b) not wanting to do my part to earn that kingdom or c) just being angry with God for some heartbreak that I went through and wanting to see if there was something more fulfilling on the other side … but most likely d) all of the above.

In the wise words of Homer Simpson: “D’oh”! I should have seen this coming because it happens to literally everyone who does this.

First, you are happy to be “free” of God and moral responsibility so you can indulge your selfish desires. Then, you keep falling lower and lower and lower below the bar and getting hurt and used and feeling empty until you hit rock bottom. Finally, you realize you are an idiot and you turn back to the right. And when I say “turn back” I don’t mean “go strolling gaily back to God’s feet” I mean “crawl on bruised and beaten hands and knees and stare up at him through black eyes and a busted face to weakly apologize and then rather desperately beg for another chance”.  I’m surprised God isn’t doing that thing people do when someone stupid keeps aggravating them- you know? That thing where you take off any glasses you may be wearing or set down your pen for a minute and pinch the skin above your nose and between your eyes and massage your forehead because their stupidity is giving you a migraine? I guess He’s a little more patient and forgiving.

Jonah rebelled and got swallowed by a fish. That had to be gross. I got used and manipulated and got my heart broken and quite literally every emotional/psychological/figurative part of me bashed in or covered in scars. I was walking around physically seeming fine but I was a hollow husk. The “invisible” parts of me were on life support- like my heart and soul. In retrospect, I would rather take the fish. But in further retrospect, I don’t want to be Jonah.

So who do I want to be like?

Anyone in the bible who was faithful to God and followed the path He chose for them.

There are countless people. Disciples who were lead around by the one and only Jesus. Women who were pure and devoted and wound up being married to kings and great men (in other words blessed sevenfold). People who once sinned for a living but stopped to follow the Lord. Jesus’s own mother, Mary, who carried him even though she was a virgin and there had to be some social stigma with that. The list goes on and on and on.

But one person comes to mind right now, in this time that I am seeing a huge upswing in blessings like friends, things I’ve wanted and experiences I longed for.

Being back in church and seeking God’s plan, I realize that I want to be most like Abraham. I know, I know. I’m a girl and that’s another man.  It’s the principle of his life though. He wasn’t perfect. In fact, he assumed God wouldn’t give him a son and had one with his maid (his wife consented). Nobody’s perfect. When he did have a (second) son, however, it was a complete miracle because of he and his wife’s ages. (around 90!). Her conception and birth of Isaac was nothing short of a miracle. Of course he was treasured by his proud father. That is why it was such a shock when God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham probably didn’t want to kill his miracle son, but he planned to since it was God’s wish. Right down to laying him out and raising a sword to cut him with. God thanked him for his obedience by offering him a ram instead, right at the very last moment. He wanted to test if Abraham would follow through with his faithfulness.

Giving up something or someone is never easy. We try to make it easy by fabricating clichés like “there’s other fish in the sea”. “Whatever’s meant to be will be”. “When one door closes, another opens.” They may be true, but they do very little to stop the waterworks when you’re holed up on the couch on the phone with your mom, dishing about the recent breakup or the seemingly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you had to pass up for various reasons. Then there’s biblical reasoning, which can help stop the pain maybe 33% more than the clichés. “When God takes away something, he gives you something better”. The story of Job and what was lost to test his faith. Still, it hurts. It makes you feel like the ground is falling out from under you and you are small with no control over anything.

I personally had a phobia of such a thing. I could deal with losing money or a possession I cared about or even a job. I could reason with myself logically about how many thousands of other things were out there that I could have instead. But losing a loved one was always terrifying. More specifically, being abandoned by a loved one. It didn’t matter whether that was by death or by their deciding that I was a waste of time and resolving to avoid me with a passion. Irrational fear was irrational fear. It began when someone I loved when I was 18 gave up on me in such a way that it felt like a death. I never could reach out to him or reason with him again after that fateful night. I never could understand why he acted like he did either. I just had to live with it. Later, that fear would become baggage for another serious relationship. It would turn to co-dependent behavior that could only be straightened out when God sent us our separate ways, clean break, no contact for a very long time.

That story of a loved one going away has a major significance, but it also has a resolve and a happy ending and it is best saved for later.

 This year, I must rise to a new challenge. I have to cast aside all those fears, knowing whenever I get into a relationship or a friendship that God could will it to be given up at some point. God could will me to give up my car. Or my laptop. Or my new surfboard. Or all my clothes. All these things are important to me, but replaceable. If God willed me to sell all I own and go live in a 3^rd world country, I would. Possibly with some reluctance, but I would. The sore spot is where God could will me to give up the people.

There are some good ones around me right now. Most of them are girls. All of them I met at church. They seem to be a great asset and a positive influence to me. But who knows? Maybe in some unforeseen way, they are holding me back. Maybe I am holding them back. Maybe God will give each of us a mission (perhaps whatever it is that could require me to sell what I own) and none of us will be going to the same place or doing the same thing. Maybe God will take me somewhere I never imagined in my wildest dreams… but for them, the plan is to become wives and mothers and move to Memphis. If I’m taken somewhere beyond my wildest dreams, you’d think I’d be overcome with excitement… but I can imagine that the closer I grow with my friends, the more painful it would be to say goodbye. I can picture being on board a jumbo jet, bound for a foreign country and looking out the window in the general direction of where they all live, with greasy black mascara-stained tears streaming down my face at odd angles with the shift in gravity as the plane lifts into the sky.

If I’m going to be like Abraham, I have to remember that what matters in the end is God. He has a divinely written plan for me, and the hardships I will face getting there are but a blip on the radar. I don’t want to say goodbye forever to anyone that I care about. But in order to find out what awaits me, I have to be willing to give up Isaac. In the end, if God doesn’t give “Isaac” back to me, he will give me something better. So what will I give Him? My faith.

In 2013, I won’t run away.