hymns

I didn’t grow up listening to hymns, nor have I ever gone to a church where that was the music style. But I’ve been going to this Bible study on Tuesday mornings at a church where I am both the youngest and the only single person in the room (lovely). We sing a few hymns before we start, and it’s been a cool experience for me. I don’t really like to sing along, but I love to read the words and think about the meaning of the song. 

One time (a long time ago, actually) we sung the hymn “The Servant Song,” and this line really stuck out to me:

 I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the night time of your fear

The whole hymn talks about us as brothers and sisters in Christ being servants to each other. The words are so beautiful to me. I think I’ve said before how much I value a good community. I am thankful that there are friends around me to hold the Christ-light when I am in the darkness of my own fears. 

It’s been a strange rough day, emotionally, but God is really showing me kindness and saying, “I see you, Bridgette.”

happiness is a warm gun.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life…duh, right? But one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made is putting all of my hope for happiness in one place. marriage. baaaarf. I am 27 now, and I’m just now realizing how deeply imbedded this idea was that the only thing that could really make me happy was marriage. It wasn’t a conscious thing…it was just ingrained in my existence. It started most likely when I saw how broken my family was and how determined I was not to let that be me. I’ve wanted my own family since I was a little kid. I wanted to be a wife and a mother because I wanted to experience happiness. I’m always, even now, looking forward to that future. I transferred that hope onto people…and as things go, people fail to meet your ridiculous expectations. But that’s ok…in fact, I’m glad. I’d rather have the heartache associated with unmet desire than to put that kind of pressure on another person. I realize that marriage is not a means to happiness. The pastor of a GCM church I went to last weekend, John Drage, said it like this, “The purpose of getting married is not to make you happy. The purpose of getting married is to make you like Christ. And to show Him off to the world.” So…I’ve realigned my priorities…I understand, accept, and repent of my misplaced hope. I’m sorry to anyone who was hurt by my expectation of them. 

I’m thankful that God has spared me of entering a marriage where He was not the focus. I am spared of a marriage where my goal, happiness, is dependent on another human being. It’s ridiculous to me now to think that another human being could determine my happiness…but don’t we all sort of do that? Humans are flawed and unpredictable. God is not. 

I look forward to a day when I get to be more like Christ by doing marriage right. I’m excited for my relationship with this other flawed person to be honoring to God. It’s going to be pretty sweet and totally worth the wait. Singleness is a gift! I love gifts…

note: this title has nothing to do with this post…it’s just the first song lyric about happiness to pop into my head…am i totally whacked?

not again, God, please…

This past weekend I went to Missouri with my friend Andrea. She was speaking at a women’s retreat at the GCM church at Mizzou. I was just along for the ride, no one cares what I have to say;) So, the retreat was great, but that’s not what I want to share. Saturday night we went to The Rock (the church that’s like the Revolution) and they are doing a series called Sex for Christians. Immediately I was just overcome with a sense of dread because that night the topic was marriage. I thought, not again, God, please. I feel like in the last six months I’ve been bombarded with messages on being single and being reminded of it…or preparing for marriage. But, let me just say, it was really good. I even went to the website for the church and tried to listen to it again (it’s not posted yet). Andrea said, “I’m pretty sure he just healed the father wounds of every girl in here.” Yeah…no joke. But that’s not what I want to talk about either…

I went to look for the sermon, and found that it wasn’t there. But the other ones were…I knew that one of their staff guys talked about Singleness the previous week, but I wasn’t interested in that. I thought, oh please, another dude talking about how hard it is to be pure and single. Well, I listened to it…God totally prompted that, because I didn’t want to listen at all. The guy (Brandon Hoops) is a single guy on staff, and he had some great things to say. 

He said that when we’re single (that is, unmarried), we want to be in charge, we feel like we’re incomplete in our waiting.

-We want God to agree with our rules. Instead of asking “how can I honor God?” we ask “how much can I safely indulge in?”

-We want God to move in our time frame. We make things happen…does that usually turn out well for you? I know it has been disastrous for me.

-We want to follow God up to the point when it might cost us something. How many times have you heard someone say, “I’ll do that when I’m married.” I said that about going on staff for a looong time. 

God wants to sustain us when we’re single. “Our Father is not in the business of ripping His children off…God is not a cheapskate.” In the story of the prodigal son, the child comes back to his father and begs to be a servant, but the father makes him a son again. And the older brother who is there the whole time, working the fields, not exploiting his father, gets angry. He wants to know how this can be- that he is always there, always working, yet he has nothing? His father says, “everything I have is yours.” Guys…Jesus is not holding back! He is not ripping us off!  Hoops says, “What will it take for us to be less anguished and more trusting?”

So, continually yield to God in this area of singleness. And ask yourself, “how can I honor God in this single season?” 

1. Zoom out and get perspective. Step away from the intensity that is your desire to be married and see how God is being faithful right now. 

2. Don’t just react…have a plan. Be intentional in inviting others into your life, and share your plans. How will you set boundaries in dating relationships? Don’t assume you will have self control, because when the time comes, I guarantee you will not. 

3. Be careful of the small things. Saying “a little self indulgence won’t hurt” really adds up 

4. Do life together with others. We long to know intimately and to be known in the same way. God is taking care of you and there are people who will care for you if you let them. LEARN from others!

5. See singleness as a gift. We tend to want to just skip over this time in life and go from naive college student, to blissfully wed. But look how much we can learn and grow in this time? We are preparing for life with another person…and eventually with little people. I don’t know about you, but I kind of want to be prepared for that…

the end. love you. bye.

the winter of our discontent.

I haven’t written about that Wilderness book in a while…you want to know why? Because I have successfully escaped into the world of Percy Jackson. Yes, I’m a twelve year old at heart…don’t judge me. But it’s time I awaken from my stupor like a sleepy forest critter after a long winter. I should get back to important things in life…like starting a part time job at Panera Bread and actually working hard at support raising. So…Boom. 

And as for the title of this post…i have never read this book. I wrote a paper on Steinbeck once, it was terrible. I failed pretty miserable at being an English major…

 

So, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic. or something like that. 

BATTLE CRY!

I’ve decided to write some thoughts about what I read in this book. I really just want to write about some of the things that almost directly correlated with my own wilderness season. Not everything is the same, but she had a pretty similar situation and the words she wrote really resonated with me. 

In the beginning of the book, Marian Jordan describes a season of her life that was a combination so fierce it can only be described as the perfect storm:

Heartbreak
Rejection
Humiliation
Disappointment
Unmet Desire
Loneliness
Despair

 

aka The Wilderness. A time when everything sort of falls apart and there’s nothing you can do about it. Most of us have been there…many of us have yet to experience this part of life. But, Jordan says she realized if this was a test, she was surely failing. She says a friend came into her room and saw her state and “Seeing myself through her eyes, I saw a girl who didn’t seem to have joy. A woman who didn’t have assurance that the future was filled with hope, and, therefore, she was living in the pit of despair.” When I read that, I thought…oh dear God. I am living in the pit of despair and I’m in complete denial about it. I’ve got to get out. 

 

So what do we really do when life throws us something completely off the radar? When our future is changed, or even ruined, at the drop of a hat? How do we handle heartbreak, rejection, humiliation, disappointment, unmet desire, loneliness, and despair? For me, the easy thing to do would be to hole up in my room, close off my heart, and never love again. If that doesn’t sound like a life worth pursuing, I don’t know what is. But, as the Fray say, sometimes the right thing and the hard thing are the same. 

 

I decided that I would really face this wilderness season head on. With the armor of God. (Side note: I’ve been really into comparing my life and imagining myself engaged in an epic battle…seriously, I even motivate myself at the gym by imagining that I’m preparing for the Battle of Armageddon). So…there will be more thoughts on my own life and the book and hopefully some scenes from Lord of the Rings or the final Harry Potter. 

 

Reading > Writing

I’m just about to finish the book mentioned in the previous post. I promise to gather my thoughts and make a ridiculously long entry that no one (but maybe Suzie) will have time/desire to read. 

I’m also still working on the Pursuit of God….when I have to read the book with a dictionary, it takes a while. But it also has such wonderful things to say, I might have a separate entry that is ridiculously long all about that. I’m certain no one will read that one! 

 

In reference to my title: I realize I majored in creative writing…but we can safely say I should have picked a different major. and we can probably just call it “casually studied” rather than “majored.” Just imagine me actually using air quotes, and my self-deprecation will be complete. 

 

 

Currently Reading

Wilderness Skills for Women: How to Survive Heartbreak and Other Full-Blown Meltdowns. 

amazon

I’m pretty sure Marian Jordan read my journal and then wrote a book about it. 

 

More later:)

worst.year.ever.

oh. my. gosh. can this year end already???

The Pursuit of God

I am reading The Pursuit of God (in case you missed the title of this post) by A.W. Tozer. It’s one, of just a few, Christian books I haven’t wanted to throw on the ground. Maybe God is changing my heart…let’s hope so. That’s what I’ve been praying for Him to do. Also, to help me to learn to be more emotional, specifically to cry more. He answered that prayer in full force (Thanks?). But anyway…Do you feel like you are often just missing something? Like, surely there is more to life than this? Surely this isn’t all that it means to be a Christian? Well, I do. I feel like I’ve been missing something that everyone else seems to “get.” And maybe it’s my lack of ability to really dig deep in my soul and figure out what’s underneath the mess. But, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a lot more simple than that. Maybe when I became a Christian, I stopped looking and became stuck in the “is this really it?” stage. 

Towzer writes, “How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls.”

How do we do this??? Towzer says,”The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.” 

Well…that’s all I have for now. I just read the first chapter. So…Maybe it’ll spark more thought. One more thing, though, is this heart-wrenching, beautiful prayer that stabbed me in the heart:

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”