Still waiting for two pink lines
but, thank God, I think I've finally surrendered
Dave and I were both 17 when we fell in love. It was wonderful and terrible. The wonderful of it all I’m sure I don’t need to explain. But it was terrible because I knew with absolute clarity that it was not right for us to be together. God had said a clear no. And I hated that.
The next two years were a long string of rejected coffee dates, endless long messages, ‘we’re just friends!’, pleading prayers and many tears. I’m afraid to say I did not handle the situation with a great deal of maturity. But when I remember I was only 17 and 18 I think I must have some grace on myself. It’s a long story, for another time.
But this situation, more than anything else, is where God dealt with the issue of active surrender in my life. Where I did something, terribly hard for me, and had trust that he was good, that he was up to something good in the midst of my confusion and pain. He was, of course.
In the summer of 2015 I was doing a three month Bible course at YWAM Perth. Though I had not seen or talked to Dave in many weeks, I knew that I was still desperately in love with him. I remember one blazing hot day I was sitting on a low wall out the back having some time in prayer, begging God to take my feelings for Dave away. ‘If I can’t be with him, would you please just let me get over him. Please take my feelings for him away. It’s been a year and a half! I can’t take it anymore!’
I sensed the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit, ‘I won’t take this away. You need to learn to dance with me anyway.’ A new sense of resolution was birthed in my spirit – I don’t need to stop wanting to be with Dave. This longing is not going away, and at least for now it will be an unfulfilled desire. But I can be okay. I can let go of the wrestle. I can surrender, and trust God and be full of joy.
And I was. Finally. For half that year I lived with both longing and joy. I truly, truly thought Dave and I would never be together. And yet I was truly at peace. Wrestle though I had, I had finally surrendered and it was wonderful.
I tell you, it was the shock of my life when I sensed a clear ‘yes’ from God and we started dating later that year. There’s much more to the story and there are many reasons we had to wait. But through those two years we both learned what it looked like to surrender and trust. And we taste and saw the goodness of God. He was so kind to us.
I wrote a few months ago about our wait to see two pink lines on a pregnancy test. I wrote about my struggle to surrender, when surrender mostly looked like trusting and then doing nothing. I’m not very good at doing nothing. I was struggling. And we’re still waiting.
But somewhere in the last two months, by the grace of God, something shifted in my soul. My friends have brand new babies in their arms. All my plans and timelines and perfect age gaps are gone. The time for greater intervention creeps closer. I still want another baby, more than almost anything in this life, but I have this unflappable, deep in my soul, sense of peace. I think at last I’ve learned a new kind of surrender.
Genesis 32 tells the slightly bizarre story of Jacob, the trickster, wrestling with a man all night long. It is eventually revealed that this man is God himself, who, upon Jacob’s insistence, blesses him. God also gives him a new name, Israel, which probably means ‘he who wrestles with God.’
One of the strange things about this story is that God promised good things for Jacob before he was even born. Jacob spends his whole life struggling and scheming to get what God had already promised to give him (Genesis 25:23), in his way and his timing. I resonate with this so much. I have such a clear sense that God has already promised to give us another child, but I spent about 9 months wrestling with him anyway, insisting on God’s blessings in my way and my timing.
It’s the whole story of humanity right from the pages of scripture and our own lives. We try to take and grasp for ourselves rather than gratefully receiving God’s good things in his way. We see the world as a place of scarcity and lack rather than a place of abundance. We worry that if God is giving someone else a good thing, we are missing out. If they get chocolate cake now, maybe there won’t be enough for me! So like toddlers we flail and wail, rather than trusting that God has more than enough for us. He’s not going to run out of chocolate cake.
And though I have been Jacob, wrestling with God, insisting on my slice of chocolate cake RIGHT NOW (and a big one!), God has been the same as He always is. Not despising my wrestle, but engaging with me as he did with Jacob. Blessing me in the process. Teaching me to trust.
I was reading (listening to…) a book on marriage recently and this quote, in a chapter on singleness, brought me to tears.
“I am not single because I am too spiritually unstable to possibly deserve a husband, nor because I am too spiritually mature to possibly need one. I am single because God is so abundantly good to me, because this is his best for me. It is a cosmic impossibility that anything could be better for me right now than being single. The psalmists confirm that I should not want, I shall not want, because no good thing will God withhold from me.” Paige Benton Brown in The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Kellar
I’m not, not pregnant because I’m broken, or undeserving. I’m not pregnant because God is so abundantly good to me and right now this is his best for me.
To be clear, I’m not one to think that every single life circumstance is God’s best for me. We live in a broken world, with broken people. And we are also able to orchestrate horrible life circumstances for ourselves through our own actions. Free will and the sovereignty of God is a complex theological issue. But in this particular circumstance I have such a clear sense that this is God and that he is up to something good. For me this is his best, right now.
I’m glad I wrestled with God. The alternate in those moments is to become false, to shut down or to walk away. So I’m glad I wrestled. And I’m also glad that the wrestle is over, at least for now.
So now I will be waiting in hope during Advent season. There’s something lovely about that I think.
Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the LORD! Psalm 27:14
Something to Listen To – Sold Out, Sincerely by Benjamin William Hastings
A new album from my favourite artist! He’s done it again! His music seems to speak to right where I’m at as a girl who grew up in church loving God earnestly and who is wrestling to bring that childlike affection to maturity in the face of adult life. The first time I listened to this album it was like a refreshing rain on a parched soul, particularly It’s Still You. I hope you might love it too!
Our house is half decorated for Christmas. Oranges are currently dehydrating in my kitchen and some very not toddler safe candlesticks are collected on my dining room table. I have a vision for my Christmas decorations this year, I hope I can pull it off… I really, really love this time of year and think this will the first Christmas Wes really gets it. I’m so, so excited!
Uni is over for the semester so I’m hoping to be able to write here more often over the summer. In just over a week it will be a year since I first posted on Substack! I shall have to come up with something fun to celebrate…
May God’s peace be with you today!
Rachel
This was a beautiful read. Thank you for your encouragement 🩷
"But suddenly and unexpectedly" is a phrase I use often in describing God's plan for my life. Praying for this for you too!
Blessings...