The Desire for Independence

At twenty-two years old, my life does not compare to the average young woman's.

I'm not in college, studying for a degree. I'm not working a job, supporting myself. I'm not married, having my first kid. I am not entrenched in foreign lands, doing missionary work.

I'm living at home, helping raise my siblings. I'm homeschooling my little brother and helping my mother manage the rest. I'm waiting, and learning to live in the waiting, surrendering to the refining.

"Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands."

Seasons

Last night, it suddenly occurred to me that I must learn to enjoy every season of the life that God has given me.

I often do this. I fantasize about alternate realities. I dream of easier days. I paint the kind of future I want in my mind and I breeze about life in the now, only partially present, putting off true happiness and fulfillment until everything looks the way I want it to.

In the same token, I realized that I often refuse myself the joy of truly loving and embracing my current circumstances because society has vilified it so extensively. Society says that I should be doing very different things at this stage of my life. Society says that I'm not where I should be. Society has taught me that my age is a window, which time is dragging me by all too quickly. Hurry, hurry, hurry, society cries. You are losing time.

Society

Silencing society's oppressive voice has been particularly difficult for me. I have a sensitive nature. I take very seriously - too seriously - what others think about me. I am crippled by criticism and I take accusations (which one of a more secure personality would probably dismiss) whether founded or not to heart.

It's oppression cleverly shrouded in a cloak of seeming truths. Selfishness and self-pity rear their ugly heads in time with the doubts and seek to overwhelm me. And I must resist them. I must overcome.
The Lord stands on His high hill and beckons me - "Come up higher." He waits, hand outstretched, for me to forsake the worldly voices that threaten reproach and revilement. "We'll reject you," they tell me. "You will be an outcast."

And Beauty, that traitor, taps insistently on my shoulder: "Youth can only be yours so long. You'll lose your chances of making anything of yourself the longer you wait on this God of yours. Surely He can't expect you to sit there forever while age and time ravage you. God helps those who help themselves..."

The voices of loved ones long gone echo in my mind as I survey their curse's seeming fulfillment: "You'll never do anything with your life. You'll never be anyone. You'll wile away your days on a bed with a book. And what good are you to the world that way?"

Dear Lord, my heart cries. How long? 

"When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love him."

Trusting God

I wait on You, do I not? I trust in You. My life is Yours. And You have chosen this "standstill." You have chosen this time for quietness and servitude. You have kept from me the typical reins of independence afforded so many women my age these days and You have kept me dependent. Dependent on You.

You are losing time, society tells me. I am the Keeper of time, You say. I will not always be young and beautiful, I say. Beauty is fleeting, You remind. I want independence! I cry. But I want you dependent on Me, You proclaim.

The war goes on and yet my Lord always wins. I have you here, He tells me. This life I have given you is one of joy and blessing, can't you see? Or are your eyes so blinded by the world's expectations? 

Do you see in the eyes of these little ones the happiness your presence gives? Do you hear in their marked comments how they dread losing you? Do you see the faults and the sins I once brought you out of now trying to ensnare them? They have ground in need of tending and I have given you them. I have you HERE. For them. For Me. For you. 

My Purpose At Home

God has given me my home as my missionary field. Why should God send me to the unbelievers and the lost when so many precious souls, with whom I daily reside, are as yet not totally won? Why should He thrust me into an ever-darkening world, wholly unprepared and wholly unrefined, when I am not ready? He weaves a tapestry out of my life and every day He threads new purpose, new substance.

And so I lay down my desire for independence and I put to rest my impatient cries. I surrender to His timing and I embrace this season of sisterhood and servitude. I will find joy in the stage at which God holds me and I will stop expecting tomorrow alone to bring fulfillment. There is work to be done in this time - God forbid I should neglect it.

Do with me what Thou wilt, becomes my prayer. To Thee I surrender.

"We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now."

Quotes by Elisabeth Elliot.