I don't have any particular one thought tonight, but rather a few on an approximation of the same subject. In normal, everyday life, winter quarter is off and running: this is week 3. Thank goodness for holiday weekends!!! I'm so glad I'll only have 4 days of work to get through this week - which is really only 3, because Friday hardly counts... Yay!
I'm thinking about love and what it means to love as I stare at a stack of papers (and no, this doesn't really reflect anything about my work). And I'm pondering the concept of being "in love" versus "loving" someone. How does it all work? I'm not going to negate the fact that the feelings of love are special - really special - but are they intrinsic to a certain kind of relationship? Or are they developable? Meaning, can one hope and plan for them to come into a relationship in the future even if they aren't there now? Or if they aren't there, will they never be there?
I'm also thinking about the Bible's memorable love stories - Eve and Adam, Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca and Isaac, Rachel and Jacob, Ruth and Boaz, Hannah and Elkana, etc. Where did they fit into the spectrum of "in love" versus "love"?
I went to a wedding this weekend. It was everything a wedding should be - beautiful, celebratory, fun, unique, sacred. The couple who married have had one of those "long-story" relationships. You know what I mean: the kind where you ask how they got together and it's not a quick story of, "We met, fell in love, got married" in a neat, orderly fashion. Rather, it has twists and turns along the way - unforeseen plot developments and tests of courage and faith. I love the simplicity of the 3-phrase relationships sequences, but I also love the creativity and care God displays in the "long-stories." They show how God works uniquely in each life, and how He DOES care enough about the small, minute details, and how He works ALL THINGS together for GOOD for those who love Him and live out His purposes.
I know not what my life story will look like, much less if there will be a love plot that develops into a wedding plot in it or not. I've had seasons of my life where I've felt more inclined one way or the other (for awhile I thought I'd be a single missionary overseas, and for another while I thought I'd be a pastor's wife - so far, of course, neither have come to pass). I am content at this point with however God leads me in life. I know I've certainly struggled with the desire to be married in the past, even at the expense of God's calling in my life, but no longer.
The last couple years have brought me first to a place of brokenness, and then to the realization that I want what God wants even more than I want what I want in my life. If He can best use me to honor and glorify Himself through singleness, I can, do, and will joyfully accept that. Likewise, if He has a man for me that I can uniquely support and encourage and challenge to be a better lover of Jesus and man of God in our world, and provide an "En-gedi" retreat, and through that relationship brings children into my life that He gives me responsibility for raising, I rejoice in that as well.
Life, it seems, is such a matter of timing and perspectives - particularly in the relationship department. My sister met her fiance at something of an inconvenient time in the sense that she was sort of involved in another relationship, but also in a good time because both she and Andrew were at the place in their life where they wanted to get married. It was like the next thing on their to-do list. My friend Bri met her fiance at an intensive 2-week missionary candidate school, where they both knew that they would be meeting like-minded and like-purposed individuals, and since they both were on the lookout for a potential relationship, it seemed to start up fairly easily.
I'm not sure where I'm at in the timing/perspective department. I don't feel like I need to rush, but I also don't want to foolishly pass up the opportunity at a good, strong, healthy relationship. Ultimately, I just want God to be glorified in all of my life, and I want Him to be free to move as He would like - if He wants to put a wedding plot in my life and make it a boom-boom-boom sequence, I don't want to be in the way. If He has a more intricate, detail-oriented design, I don't want to mess up His handiwork. And if He has something different in mind all-together, then I want to be open to that as well.
In classical ENFP fashion, it may appear that I'm wishy-washy, but I think I'm actually just solidly determined to not be in my own way. Maybe that's a problem, though, because God does give us freedoms and the ability to choose how details develop, and maybe by trying to step back so much, I'm failing to progress forward at all.
Food for thought...
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