Monday, April 13, 2009

A woman must come of age herself..."

"... She must find her true center alone". - Anne Marrow Lindbergh (A Gift from the Sea)

Coming into this life alone is a difficult task. These past couple of weeks have been difficult in a new way. Differentiation (as my counselor would call it) has given me the freedom to take responsibility for my life, and the responsibility to take freedom for my life.

I started this blog four days ago and am only now posting it. Is that not ridiculous? I wanted to write about the book I quoted at the beginning, in full detail, give a book review. But I can't. I keep going back and looking for those quotes that moved me, that moment when it all made sense. I can't put it down in a blog. I would have to retype the book, and I'm not sure blogspot would allow me a blog that long. Also, honestly, some of that is gone at the moment. Isaiah 54, the meaning, the words, they hold true as they did two weeks ago at the ocean, but that rush is gone.

Today I read Hosea. again. I startled myself when I went for a stroll post-read. This thought came to me, "I am waiting for a man to prove how much God loves me" Now let me explain:
I know and have no ability to doubt the presence of God in my life in the world.
I know Christ and that He is love
I know that my faith requires none of that love. That God is God and I am Becca and that alone is enough of a reason for me to be obedient to his every command. Even if he turns out to be an evil and vindictive jerk.
I know that God loves. lots of people. and me.
I know that I do not feel that love regularly. consistently. or with much of my being.
I know that I have been waiting to see what kind of man God gives me and that that alone would be the measure for me to know how much He loves me. just this little me.

This moment when all of that swept over me made two reactions simultaneously.
1. I feel to my knees and began to weep
2. I looked back on my years and wondered how this had happened. I remembered words from Sara Borden two or three years ago, "it's not about the husband".

I was crushed that I was this person. I have felt secure in one thing lately: My faith. I know God has been throwing curve balls like crazy, I know that my life has not included as much "God/Community/Church" time as it once did, I know all of the etc.'s included here... but my faith is stronger than ever. My faith that I am a sinner and that Christ is Christ, and that all of the other stuff will work itself out.

Now I feel rocked. Shaken. Shuddered. I know that I desperately want God to bring me a man that shouldn't love me, but does anyway. I want to be so immensely surprised by this love that I can not explain how it happened to anyone. I want a love like Christ's only flawed and human.
I want my perfectly flawed one. I want Jesus to prove to me that he is willing to give me one amazing and lasting and truly good thing. However. I do not want that to be my measure of God's love. I do want to truly be righteously okay with lifelong celibacy, and I want to know that the reason I am okay with this is because I am okay with it and not because I think that is what it will take to get me a man.

In spite of all of this, I know I don't have the energy to dwell on men at the moment. I don't want to. I feel sick with it all. It is so three months ago... hehe. The point is that I thought I was over the man vs god thing in college. I thought I was over it when I broke up with Andrew knowing whole-heartedly that I may be giving up my one chance at marriage... and doing it anyways because I thought I was choosing God over him (oh how naive I was... or maybe just stupid).

I am sitting here now, shaking my head at myself. and I don't know what to do about it.

PS. I did match.com. Now I feel like a prostitute. a lot.



3 comments:

candacemorris said...

I can't help but think in the moorian sense here say that being secure in your faith is neither virtue or vice, just the same with feeling shaken. Both are equally important to encounter fir indeed one fuels the other and vice versa.

To think (rather shame youself) that you should be over a struggle or transcend beyond the obvious, practical issues and desires is unfair to yourself. So I say again, leave yourself alone, trust your desires, pine for a love, and be.

For your being is beauty unfathomable.

she said...

"I do want to truly be righteously okay with lifelong celibacy, and I want to know that the reason I am okay with this is because I am okay with it and not because I think that is what it will take to get me a man."

i don't even know how i got here exactly, but i'm here, having been dropped here out of a foxhole chute the internet often provides...

and i'm not sure why i feel the need to explain it, but i've felt webstalked and voyeurized before and hope to somehow convince you i am not one of those, i am "safe"...

in any case, i find myself entering into not a congruent, but a parallel struggle (and lately it truly has felt like a battle, and nothing less) for ownership over my soul, my self, and specifically my belief about God giving me what i want, or not giving me what i want, or whether it is really Him who gives and takes away, or whether despite His hopes for us, we ruin what He has in mind (relationship-wise) in our fear of vulnerability and in our brokenness.

i have to sit with what you've written a little longer, but i wanted you to know you aren't alone. here i sit in illinois, feeling similar feelings, weeping, shuddering, wondering how i got to be what i am, and perhaps feeling like i may have missed out. feeling the nearness and love of God more strongly than i have in a long time and wondering why i had to be left brutally alone for that to be true.

thank you for these thoughts.

Becca said...

Ace: thank you. It never ceases to amaze me how your very being prods me forward toward a greater knowing of my self, and how your words force me to acknowlege my misconceptions of what self is.

Ms. She: Do not fear, I have read your blog before as well. Mme. Bookling provides us with the most welcome of portals into world yet unknown.

Thank you for stopping. Really, it is the most of encouragement to me. May I suggest to you Thomas Merton's "No man is an island"... I am finding it strangely helpful.