Found in the Fire of the Mundane

...God spent a lot of time pursuing me here...

I have been reading a lot about how we will be attuned to our true character through the fire of the mundane. In the monotony of the day-to-day existence, I receive a complete view of my character and motivation. What will I do to endure the monotony? What will I look toward from which to derive strength?

Today was a pressing reminder of that all day as I hoped to escape somehow, to do something to create in myself any feeling except the feeling of my own reality. Today, I was tired. Who isn't tired? Today, I was aware of the sadness in my heart that I'm not pregnant anymore. Today, I was aware of the various tasks and challenges related to ministry and 'life' in general that await us in the near future. It is not that there was anything ominous hanging over me, but every step I considered taking was a step that required energy or focus or perseverance, and I did not quite feel like mustering up any of those things. There was no thrill today, just the stinging feeling of reality. If I was to have thrill, it would have to be man-made. If I was to have expectant hope, I would have to find something which I could measurably progress toward in pursuit.

Or... would I? Maybe, today, I would find my character was finally deeper than it has been in a long time.

For most of my life, I have gotten through by living off the steam and expectation of upcoming momentous occasions. I look forward to them, and I live longing for them, day-by-day. It's a pattern that developed early in my childhood. Every day life was never just okay when I was a child. The mundane life in our world was very painful, often abusive, so as a survival technique, I learned to find the strength to endure by looking forward to different 'events' in the future. When I was a kid, the events were trivial: a school play, a field trip, a party at a friend's house, prom, a concert. But it worked. As I got older, the momentous occasions grew in their complexity and meaning. As well, the grew in their ability to give me a sense of self-worth and purpose in the world.

As a child, when these weighty, epochal events would come to an end, I'd find myself overwhelmed with sorrow and sadness.  I would require a few days, or weeks even, so that I could direct my focused obsession toward something new through which to fuel myself. Once the 'new' was found, I'd look to it, and onward I could go. My gas tank would be full. I could drive for miles again through the daily grind of being in an abusive home because I had my next pit-stop to look toward. I had my next dream to give me hope and sustenance and happiness.

Unfortunately, even when I left home and began to live what could be considered a healthy and normal life, I couldn't quite shake this pattern of living. My motivation, my purpose... it was hard to find them in the everyday and the ordinary. What worth did anything everyday and ordinary have? And what's more, it was hard for me to expect that the everyday and ordinary could be something from which I could ever derive pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. The every day and the ordinary had always been the things that brought me pain. I didn't know how to reconcile this even as I experienced a new type of repetitive experience that didn't include abuse. This issue continued through my period of living as a single woman in my 20s, and it continued into my life as a newlywed as well.

I will NEVER forget when Jesse and I got back from our honeymoon in June of 2011. I had what must have been one of the most discouraging revelations of my entire life! We'd stopped by a friend's house to pick up some left over items from the wedding. My friend, with completely jovial intentions, said "Well, the honeymoon is over. It's all downhill from here." It was supposed to be a joke, but to me, it wasn't. My heart sank. Reality filled my mind. I suddenly understood that this was it. My grand love and romance was DONE. No more dreams of a knight in shining armor who would flood my heart with the knowledge that I was something important. No more fantasy of meeting someone who could make me feel like the most beautiful or amazing woman in the world. I don't mean to insult Jesse or how he treated (treats) me. I just mean to say, reality hit that this was it. I had waited in expectant hope for a love story from which I would then draw my self-worth and definition and everything  I should have derived from God and from a healthy nurturing childhood. Yet I had chosen to marry THIS guy who, (let's be honest here folks), was not ever the great pursuer! He was logical, often called stoical, and there was no fluff about him.  I'd made this choice of a sound mind and out of good reason and conviction. I was married to Jesse; we would follow God in ministry, BUT it started to sink in that I was letting go of the idea of a boy who would be my SAVIOR in my own personal love story. This guy wasn't here to make me feel like the queen of his own private world, and his personality wasn't that which would accidentally make me feel like that even when he wasn't intending to! So yeah, my friend's words sounded ridiculously true. It was all downhill from there. There was nothing to which I could look forward. I felt....doomed almost... from where would the continual fulfillment come?

What I was realizing was that I never really developed a theology for how not to feel thrilled. All I'd ever known was feeling pain, or feeling expectation of fulfillment, or feeling thrilled. So if there was not a new expectation for which to live, then what was I living for? The idea of living with a deeper more full sense of purpose that went beyond my object of affection, or my job, or beyond my role as a Mom, or someone in ministry, or a wife, or a daughter, or a sister, well THAT would take possessing the sense of security in Christ alone. And I didn't quite have that down yet... I did a pretty good job at faking it till I made it in my 20s! I took big risks and followed God, and I looked like a very independent young woman who relied solely on her God! But the truth is, there was always the lingering thought in the back of that young woman's mind that whatever she was ''doing'' at the moment, whatever life she was living fully dependent on God, was just temporary, until her TANGIBLE savior of some sort arrived and she could rest and stop striving. She hadn't fully grasped it yet, what it meant to have a life hid in Christ. She needed to be able to touch her purpose still, to touch her 'meaning,' see her 'definition.' They couldn't be things that held purely by faith....

yet.

Honestly, if I'd married a different man, perhaps a man who did make me feel like I was the apple of his eye and the woman he'd been waiting for his entire life, I would have found something from which to draw my worth, a visible source, something palpable, and I would have drained it dry in my intense need for meaning and validity. I would have crushed the very thing I loved... In a way, marrying a guy who is still learning how to express his deep emotions is actually a gift from God. Because I don't have the temptation to find my confidence and self-worth and purpose in my husband. I can't rely on a love-story to make me feel something. I have to go to God first, which we all know is where I need to go first anyway! Without the deeper, transcending anchor that I find in my relationship with God and deriving purpose in life from Him, I am sure I would have no way to handle reality, days like today, and being able to live when there is no magic momentous moment.

God has been teaching me to experience a new feeling. No, I'm not talking about pain this time.  But I'm not speaking of a rush of thrilling sensation either. This feeling is more heavy, more neutral, yet it is full. It's calm. It's still. Perhaps it's peace? But it isn't filled with energy in a way that it feels like I am going to explode at the seams. Rather, it's more like a very slow and steady filling... it's like I am ''be being filled,'' as the Greek says in Ephesians 5:18. Perhaps it's the Spirit...

And with this feeling, I can be aware... aware that really awful things could happen in the future. But as well, really amazing things could happen. I'm not assured of either or that they will happen in a perfect or acceptable ratio with one another. But I can know that whatever does happen, I have a God on my side who will handle the happenings with me. And I can know that I have a purpose, whether free or captive to circumstances I would not choose, whether sick or well. I AM inclined to fear just how bad life could get, but it is not for me to take thought of my life (Luke 11 and 12 right?)... rather, it is for me to seek first the Kingdom of God...

In childhood, I survived by looking forward to the great moments in the future, and living in expectant hope of how someday a rescue would come that would fulfill my deepest desires. Now, I survive by confessing my deepest desires daily to my God, by accepting what He's given me as well as what He's allowed me to lose, by recognizing where my expectations of thrill are not being met, but knowing that even if they were quenched in such a way as I'd like, it would be temporary and unsustainable. Now I survive by the be being filled of the Spirit which comes only in the exact measure I need moment by moment. I cannot store it up, but I also need not fear that it will not be here for me when I am in need. This ''filling'' doesn't feel thrilling. But it's not disappointing either. It's reality. And it points me Heaven-ward in a reminder that THIS world is not where I will find ultimate fulfillment. It is impossible. Always illusive... and anything that promises fulfillment in this life is lying to me. We were made to live in unsullied communion with God and one another... that can't happen here. We'll get it again one day. But for now, we find ourselves and our purpose in the enduring of the already but not yet... in the fire of the mundane...

"24Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” 25He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods."