Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!
Over the past couple of weeks I've been challenged by our pastor. There were many areas in my life that had started to become depression pockets for me. What I mean by that is that I was allowing those areas to cultivate a discontent. I allowed them to lay stagnant, but then God provided a few humbling experiences. The first was our pastor's sermon from a couple of weeks ago. It was everything I have been learning in the last year, summed up in one sermon. It was on the sanctity of marriage and the beauty of single-hood. How many churches preach that it is healthy, even good to be single? Our pastor preached that being single is God's greatest for our lives right now. And that as a Christian our greatest goal is to expand the kingdom of God and bring glory to His name. Marriage is not our end goal. Heaven is our end goal.
I am so often fed up with the "stay-at-home daughters" that seem to be prevalent in my small group of friends. I'm not a feminist. I believe there are specific roles for women and men. I believe that God has designed all of us with unique places on His battlefield. I have a hard time seeing where staying at home for the sake of finding a husband is God's purpose in our lives. As women, our lives don't end with marriage. Our husbands will not be our spouses in heaven. If that is so than why are our only focuses on being wives? I know that whom ever I marry will be apart of my mission field. I know that when that part of my life begins, my first mission field is in my home. I am called to be a virtuous wife. And when I have kids I know that they will be my direct expansion of the kingdom of heaven. But what about now? What is my purpose? Where am I on that battlefield? I don't want to sit at home pining over who I might marry. That is God's timing. And constantly hoping will make it worse. It will cause our attention to be caught up in passing joys of this life when we should be focused on eternity.
I am thankful for my time at home. I love my family, and every time I leave I realize just how special they are to me. But it doesn't take 20+ years to learn how to keep a house. And there is only so much you can learn about parenting or marriage without actually being a parent or spouse. So girls, what is your mission? Why are you here? Who are you called to serve? I've known for years that I'm called to be on the mission field, serving pregnant women. That mission field might be here in the U.S. but it might also be out in the bushes of Africa or from a villa in Europe. Where ever it is, I don't want to waste this time. Singleness is God's greatest for me right now. So I want to use this time I have been blessed with to serve God.
Another way that I was challenged this week was to really figure out how much of my parents beliefs were my own. Do I agree with reformed theology? Do I agree with paedobaptism? If you know how passionate my parents were on these issues then you wont find it a surprise that I have come to agree with all of the big issues. But why? And can I defend this? I have really pushed myself to read and evaluate the biblical proof of these theological positions. And I've ended up realizing the practical and spiritual parts of these theological issues are things I have believed for a while. But understanding why I believe them and why they are biblical is new to me. It was hard for me to excuse paedobaptism once I started to realize how it applied to parenting. I couldn't imagine raising them without a covenantal view. I also realized just how important reformed theology was to my life also. It was such an intricate part of my grieving process. It has come to define me. And now that I understand it more I have come to realize that it is a large part of how I live my life and my mission field too.
I am so thankful for these challenges. And these humbling experiences. God has worked in such amazing ways these last few weeks. This is where the rubber hits the road and I live my life by my Christian faith rather than my parents. This is where I defy society. And I learn that my limits do not exist when I define my life by God's standards. I am working hard to fight in God's army. I want to keep my part of the battlefield strong.
I'm through accepting limits
'Cuz someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know!
Too long I've been afraid of
Losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost!