More of a playground than a thread
About a year ago while talking to a friend, I had a sudden epiphany. Emotions and thoughts crystalized into the startling truth, that I had through my upbringing and my current environment internalized the lie that you get ONE SHOT from which it is impossible to ever get back to God’s best from if you mess it up. I was raised in the second wave of homeschooling, where we were out for excellence. Academic, personal, spiritual. And while excellence is a worthy goal, there was also the message woven through the ideology, that since we were being trained better and our parents were doing their best to cover every single pitfall they ever experienced and prevent us from falling into them, that we WERE to choose better. That since we had the tools, we were now set for a wave-free life. We knew how to not date, so our hearts would never be broken. We knew how to get good grades, so we would have good jobs. We knew how to keep the law of the bible, so we would be happy. We were going to be everything our parents weren’t, and since we knew messing up even once meant wreaking your life, HEAVEN FORBID YOU MESS UP.
I have spent years desperately terrified that I was going to mess up. That I was going to fall off the wagon and DATE a guy once—and have my heart ruined forever and I could never have a healthy marriage. That I was going to choose the wrong job after college and it didn’t last for my adult life I’d be forced to live unemployed with my parents. That I was going to get involved with something that I thought was God’s will, but then it wouldn’t be, and I’d have blown it for good. That I was going to somehow make a choice that would wreck my life forever, and then I’d have to live forever a disappointment to God and my parents; proof that your whole life hinged on every single thing you did, and that judgment was double for we who knew so much better. This was one of the reasons why making the decision to leave what I thought was my life’s work but turned out to be a toxic situation was one that tore thought my vey soul.
I was blowing it.
If I couldn’t make it for my whole life in this avenue of service, I must have screwed up BIG TIME. Choices are permanent and have permanent consequences—I was now going to be Miss ‘Blew it on the mission field,’ and there was nothing better to hope for than ‘preventing more damage and hopefully not tanking any further’ for me. God’s will was a thread that if you put a toe out of place, you would never really be back on track, you would be doomed to spend the rest of your life scrambling for second or third, or fifth best, and if failing at being a missionary wasn’t a full step off the line, then I didn’t know what was.
But as I have wrestled with this issue and thought about the cardinal virtue of avoiding mistakes (and the emotional discomfort/pain that comes with them), I have realized that while it is absolutely possible to alter your life with a second or two of stupid, that God gives grace. The human heart that is rooted in God is more resilient than I had been trained to believe.
While there are certain things that are always God’s will, things that are a path—keeping His laws, walking in relationship with Him, undergoing a lifelong process of sanctification because this is how to find joy and experience God’s best, we am not powerful enough to unredeem our lives.
I can choose to live as ineffective and defeated because of a mistake, or I can choose to let God’s grace cover it. The older I get, the more I realize that sin ALWAYS has a price, but that price does NOT have to define who you are. In the divine mystery of free will and God’s sovereign control, I am free to choose, and I won’t always choose right, but I can’t defeat God’s purpose. Of course I can choose to reject God’s best for me and live a life marked by my choice, but that doesn’t mean that God can’t work through my actions.
There is a much greater wideness to God’s will than I’m used to thinking—if you go down the slide first, you are not stuck on the slide for the rest of your life. You can play in the sandpit, realize it’s not your best, and get out and more on. Yes, you might have some sand stuck to you, but it’s not eviction from the playground. God might lead you to the swings for a season, and the monkey bars for another. It’s when you decide to leave the playground and crawl through the fences that say ‘Danger’ that you have a problem. When you decide you are going to do your own thing, and God can just get out of your way.
One of the true marks of maturity is being able to a) admit you made a mistake, and b) to learn from it and c) make it right. That is actually why we aren’t whisked into heaven the moment we’re saved (though that would be nice!)—God wants us to learn to walk with Him here in the mess. Salvation is a moment in time, but after that moment starts the journey of sanctification. A journey in which we will stumble and fail many times, but the scars we earn in the process are all part of God’s plan. Our experiences make us more sympathetic towards others, more grateful to God, more aware of His character. If we are committed to following Him and living out His general will—keep His commands, love Him and others, then when He has a specific will for us, we will hear it. When our walk thus far has been training for a special assignment, God will confirm it with His peace.
So, I’m continuing to work on letting go of the lie that my story can only look one way to glorify God. That all decisions are permanent, and that it is my works and efforts that are keeping me saved. That just became it is time for me to move on from one situation, that I will never experience God’s best again. God doesn’t demand perfection, but He does ask for growth. And as long as I am committed to growing in Him, He will not hid His will or His best from me.
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