I love how God uses the crappy situations I always seem to put myself in to draw me closer to Him and remind me of forgotten truths and challenges.
In London a couple weeks ago, my friends and I stayed with an incredible lady with whom I got to have some great conversations. Even though we'd just met, the Holy Spirit and genuine desire to see a fully functioning body of Christ in both of us made it as if we could see one another through God's eyes instead of our own. I hope I was as much an encouragement and challenger to her as she was to me.
During one of our morning chats before anyone else was up, we talked about being single. She craves companionship and a godly male role model for her kids so much that it caused physical pain in my chest when I prayed for that for her. She is such a passionate and incredible lady, and I want so badly for her to have someone to share her tough prison ministry with.
As much as I long to have someone to do life with, I want it even more for her. And in that brief moment of unselfishness, she taught me a good lesson. I've heard sermon after sermon about singleness being a gift, a season, an opportunity, a time of preparation... and essentially, she was saying the same thing, but something in her words clicked differently in my heart. She made me want to be productive in my singleness by clinging to our God and spending umpteens of time with Him like I would a man. This is nothing new, nothing I haven't heard of or thought about before. But I haven't often seen it in practice. That singleness is a gift is something that women slightly older and more lonely than me say with a tear in their eye. But there was no facade with my new friend.
I don't like the awkwardness and giddiness of new relationships because I don't trust my own emotions very much. I don't trust the hype of newness and am quite adept at trying to rush through it to get to the part where we can just be together, in full confidence that both love God, love people, and love one another... not having to question the commitment. And THAT is how I saw my friend's day-to-day relationship with God. It's not new and wavering. They talk first thing in the morning about what her day will look like. She bounces ideas off of him, and they laugh at inside jokes. She calls him throughout the day without worry of annoying him. They work through problems together. They fight. They grow. She doesn't understand everything he says and does but knows without a shadow of a doubt that he has her best interests in mind. And so she trusts him and wants to get to know more of him every single day. They do life together.
She challenged me to embrace the same lifestyle, and I was so excited at the time... coming up with plans and ideas to help sustain the relationship and make it healthier and less one sided than it currently is. But, I'm an idiot and forgot all of that until today.
Because I am single right now, I have been sharing all those bouncing of ideas, inside jokes, multiple phone calls and email throughout the day, sorting through problems and such among a few close friends (in attempt to not wear any one of them out with the full force of my attention). Yesterday I hurt one of those friends. And today, when ideas, jokes, problems, and opportunities to argue and grow came up that I normally would've shared with that friend, I felt an overwhelming hole when I realized I couldn't.
But, although I am soooo talented at mangling good things, God is infinitely better at not only restoring broken relationships so that they are stronger than before but also saying “I thought we were going to do life together...? I'm still willing.” If I had not felt the holes, I probably would have wasted another day (and who knows how much longer) disregarding the opportunity to do life 24/7 with the creator. So although it really hurts to know that I hurt a friend, I am so thankful for God's faithful reminder.
