And lest anyone think...

that I typed the previous post in some deeply submitted, quietly obedient, sweetly reflective moment, let me admit that I POUNDED the hoo-ha out of the keyboard in my frustration for about half of the thing and submitted out of exhaustion for the rest of it.

I am not always as cooperative as I want to be. But I want to be cooperative. Does that count?

I guess Romans 7 is the answer about that :) Good to know I am not the first keyboard pounder. I can't help but think Paul was pounding the papyrus when he wrote it.

I love how The Message puts it:

^17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

^21-23It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

²⁴I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

²⁵The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

Know what's even better though? I REALLY love that Paul continues in Romans 8 with this almost-too-rich-to-bear news of grace:

^1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

^3-4God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

Just makes ya take a deep breath, don't it? The truth of my identity, who I am and what I can do as Jesus Christ IN Kathie Slusser is there...His Spirit is IN me, able as I am not. That's truth.

Man, I love it.

And in all my wrestling and struggling with the tasks before me in ministry, my "fish in a cornfield" feeling as one teammate puts it, I am so grateful for what Becky put in the comments of the previous post; it deserves to be out here, just like I put it on paper in 48 point font to hang in front of my nose in my office cubicle:

"There's safety in complacency but God is calling us out of our comfort zone into a life of complete surrender to the cross. To live dangerously is not to live recklessly but righteously and it is because of God's radical grace for us that we can risk living a life of radical obedience for Him."

From Steve Camp song "Living Dangerously In the Hands of God" 1988

Someday I will be cooperative AND pretty doing it. It may not be until Heaven, I guess, but I like to think it can happen here. I look forward to that :)

All that said...

the reality of what I sense I have heard from God in the past month since that prayer was prayed and what I think it means at this time is this:

• I have a significant joy and release in being more of "me" before him.
• I have sensed that the desire for a husband is indeed mine, and not his for me, but it's not bad to have put the desire before him (a big step for me), and he'll continue to mold and shape me. He wanted me to ask, but made no specific promises about it. The biggest, best, never-failing promise is that I am his, his, his now and always, always, always.
  
• All those squishy little cuddly, autumn-enhanced feelings that I want to direct to someone, that desire that I always have to dote on some one special person, are to be taken to Jesus and I will learn to dote on him. He'll show me how he likes to be cherished, because he knows I really do long to cherish well, even when I am not good at it and I fall short.
  
• I long to embrace well what he has put before me, and what's actually before me is ministry work, my job. The coming year, if looked at from a purely human perspective, frightens the daylights out of me and frightens ulcers into my stomach lining. Not only is it a huge undertaking as LT continues to grow, but I am so UNBELIEVABLY out of my element and skill set, out of my comfort zone, that I want to faint dead away after crying for a few hours. (And if anyone tries to tell me that I am smarter or more talented than I think I am, I will scream; I am NOT making this up; I am stepping into things I have no idea how to DO.) I am clinging, clinging, clinging to Luke 9:10-17, and to the five loaves and two fish I currently have at my disposal. It's not nearly enough to feed the coming year, but I will pray to do what Jesus did: give thanks to God for what I have in my hands and start breaking the pieces up and handing them out. I pray that this time next year, I, we, my whole ministry team, will look around and see 12 baskets full of extra pieces of nourishment and provision and extravagance lying about us, evidence of his unmerited favor and grace and mercy.
• I am reminded that everyone--everyone--has an unfulfilled ache, a heartache that will take them back again and again to his throne, just where we most need to be. If it turns out that mine is not having a husband to walk the journey with, then so be it. At least I know what it is, and I know how to answer the questions about it, and I know where to run to get to God's deep, abiding oceans of love. I think the time in CA just really felt like this focused time of having to think about it and look at it because it's the one common question among everyone I meet with, especially new folks. And I confess that I am kind of like the fat kid who jokes about his own weight so it won't hurt when others tease him, so sometimes I bring it up first. A good pal on my team likened having such a zeroed-in, zoned-in time of having to talk about it to a guy he used to work with who was 6' 4". He said that every customer who came into the garden department where they worked together said something like, "Wow, how's the weather up there?" or some other remark about his height. Nicholas said to me, "You just got four weeks of 'How's the weather up there?' over and over again, a big concentrated dose." It's time to let that focus dissipate, and to embrace what is actually before me, even while God is aware of my request. Praises to him who is actually also aware of my real needs, and he will meet those in his perfect sovereignty.
  

And, yes, I am crying with my nose running at my desk, blowing my dripping snout like a bazooka in the office at 6:30 at night, thanking God there are so very few people lingering about to hear me. Sometimes truth is tough, but I don't want to live in anything else. I want to go where he goes and live as he asks, even when I also want to run the other way. I love you, Jesus.

The Rest O' The Story

Errghh. I haven't finished the story not because I don't have anything to say (although it has felt a bit like that at moments, after the initial flush of putting this out there; "Shut up!" my ego yells...), but rather, there feels like too much to say now. I am all over the place.

Anyway, I know I left a 16-year cliffhanger out there, so let me resolve that and give God thanks for bringing to light an agreement I made in 1993.

Short version: I had a friend who was miserable that she was not married. She was furious with God that she was still single in her early 30s. She was angry enough that it scared me. One day, watching her in a fit of fury at the Lord, I told God I didn't ever want to be that angry with him. I told him I wanted to be content in whatever life circumstances he brought me. In fact, I resolved to be content in whatever he brought me. Sounds holy enough, eh?

After having some experiences over the past couple of years with opening more of my heart to God, learning to be more honest before him, and having him begin to draw me into coming to him as I am rather than how I think I am to be, it dawned on me recently that the whole "resolved to be content in all things" efforts had become just that: my efforts. I had probably been doing it in my own strength for a long time. Not good.

Somewhere around Labor Day I started to wonder if that commitment I made was actually an agreement with the Enemy. I wondered if there were things I was not allowing to linger in my mind or heart because my commitment had, frankly, turned into a point of pride for me. I am content, I have been content, I will be content, no matter what. No wrestling with anything that comes along, because I don't need to; I am content!

I applied it very directly to the whole singleness/marriage thing, which was really convenient since it's the most repetitive question in my life from people I interact with. I must either be something amazing or people are just in the habit of asking the question(s) all the time: are you seeing someone, are you okay alone, how is it that someone hasn't just scooped you up yet?

Well, since I had decided long ago that I would be [make myself] content with whatever came, my answer for years has been, "If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Whatever God wants is fine." As I have probably mentioned somewhere in some previous post, I had kind of embraced an automaton theology, where I thought the most obedient thing I could do was wait for the next set of directives from God; I need not, nor should not, have an opinion or preference or dream or desire. I was looking to just be obedient, which really meant perfect, not messing up anything he wanted with anything from me.

If you read this silly web thing, you know that the past several years, starting with my move to Idaho and including living alone and being away from my family and courtship with a Ugandan pastor and deeply desiring to have God meet needs in my heart that I couldn't keep quiet anymore has meant that I have had to allow God to change my theology and change my vision of who he is. He doesn't want an automaton; he wants relationship. He wants to know my heart and to let him shape it and to have every moment of me, not just the pretty Sunday school ones. Seems pretty elementary, I know, but there I am.

Thus, many things, including what I feel has been the Spirit lately asking, pressing, me to ask for what I want, led to thinking about my "commitment" to contentment when my pal asked if he could pray for me for a husband, when a conversation about love and marriage arose during a plane ride on Labor Day weekend, and when God led the talk that direction when I was visiting with a very special, dear friend just a couple of days after getting to California last month. And that pal, praise God, is not one to leave well enough alone :)

We started to pray about asking for things, about my commitment and whether it was really an agreement somehow with the Enemy, about my pride in having "stuck to it" when other people seemed needy; I was fine because I decided to be fine, and I had chosen contentment. I have survived and done well, and I have not been one of those pleading for something God might not bring or want me to have or might not think was best for me. I could always be right, because I couldn't be wrong if I didn't ask for something out loud and then it didn't come.

I still have this little vestige (okay, let's not discuss the exact size of it) of pride that doesn't want to need anything. I am not like the other girls; I am better. I can do it on my own, without putting life on hold, without being all clambering for a man, without looking about for something I don't already have.

There, I said it. Ugly, ain't it?

Liann likes to try to invite me to come down from my snooty perch and hang out with the rest of humanity sometimes :)

Errghh...I have a problem with vulnerability before God. I can't believe that for all the too-much-information spewing I seem to be perfectly capable of doing to strangers, I am still struggling with complete vulnerability before him. And being vulnerable means asking for things I believe I want but might not get.

Things I believe he has begun to stir my heart to long for, to desire, but still aren't a promise of what's to come. And since one of those things has been a desire for a husband, and I know that I can't do marriage perfectly (see, I am not a total snoot; I do know that I am loaded with flaws), I haven't known what to do with this "thing" of the Spirit seeming to press me to just ask like I mean it.

So, my pal Cindy and I prayed. And in the midst of it, Cindy said, "You know, God brings about a holy discontent at times, to move us to new things, to draw us in different directions, to lead us to desire the things of his heart that we have not encountered yet. Where has room been in your heart for his holy discontent?"

My sobbing answer: "Nowhere, because I vowed to never be discontent. I left no room for him to bring me new things, to tell me new stories, to make my heart listen to his heart. I made a commitment not to let anything change me!"

Sob, sob, sob.

So we prayed for release from that, for that vow to be undone, for forgiveness, for restoration by our perfect Jesus.

And I said it, and I say it: I would like to be married. I would like to share the journey. I would like someone to snuggle. I would like a Godly man with a sense of humor who can laugh at me and laugh at himself. I would like someone to walk with through the hard and the joyful and the ugly and the thrilling and the beautiful and the broken.

And, honestly, I would like someone who thinks I hung the moon, even though they know better. And I'll return the favor :)

When I told some old friends that I was horrified at the idea of "gifting someone with all of my miserable shortcomings", the husband, despite having a mouth full of food, could not contain himself. He cried, "No, no, no...that's the whole point! You bring that and he brings that, and it's all out there, and you love one another in spite of it all and work through it together. That's the whole point."

And more than ever, truly, I will be okay if it happens, and I will be okay if it doesn't. God has been so amazingly present and fulfilling the past several years in my life, I know he is enough.

But since I can ask, I'd like a friend who's more than a friend for the rest of the road :)