I accepted Christ with an agenda.
Don’t we all have an agenda? I usually do and when I came to that point of surrender to Jesus it was with a laundry list of “wants and needs” clutched in my fist. I held that list up to Him and said, “OK, I’ve tried every way I can to get this list fulfilled and nothing I’ve tried has worked, I can’t think of anything else to do so I guess I’ll try You.” Not much of a surrender really, but God surely saw my heart because I know He started changing me from that moment.
The number one thing on my list, the only thing of real importance to me, was a husband. I wanted to be married, happily married, to the man of my dreams who would love and cherish and care for me all the days of our life together. Single all of my life I was in anguish to get what had eluded me for so long. I was desolate, I was inconsolable, I was confused and I was afraid. Why was marriage something that had eluded me? I didn’t want to be the only one of my friends never to marry or celebrate a 25th or even a 50th wedding anniversary. I don’t know why that seemed so important, but I would count and think something like this, “OK, if I met the right man today and we married in 6 months (we’re both old enough to know when it’s right and won’t need a long engagement), we would still be young enough to be able to celebrate a 25th anniversary. Like being married for 25 years would really validate the marriage??
I was 44 when I was born again in Christ and today I am 54, and still single.
I became a parent at the age of 22, a single mom raising a son on her own I was always so sure that one day our family would grow to include a husband for me, a dad for my son and another child or two. I never really had any dreams beyond having a happy family of my own. Just like the one I thought I was raised in, but discovered as a teenager wasn’t as perfect as I’d always believed.
Dating always came hard for me. I didn’t meet men easily and thought it was my circumstances. As a single parent I worked full time, evenings and met all the wrong kind of men in the bar after work. I saw plenty of people meeting and having relationships that lead to marriage, but for me it never happened. It wasn’t for lack of trying though! I tried many dating services and read and tried many self-help ideas for finding and marrying the man of my dreams. When I accepted Christ it was like a light came on and as I drank in God’s Word and began meeting other believers I was so thankful that I’d never married the wrong man and never been divorced. I realized God had saved me from a loveless marriage and from marriage to a non-believer. With my agenda still firmly in place I was absolutely sure that God had saved me from these things because He had a godly man in mind for me. All in God’s time, right? So, I had held up my end of the bargain, I had finally surrendered to Christ and started looking around expectantly for that perfect man of God’s choosing to come into my life.
He didn’t.
I remember once back before I was born again my father telling me that I would never meet a nice man in a bar, that I should join a church. Well as a new believer I did seek out and join a church. You know what I discovered? Men of my age, single men of my age that is, do not attend church. Now that may be different in other parts of the country, but in rural NW WI, single men in the 40-60 age group simply do not attend church. To be honest, not many married men do!
It took a few years, but as 50 loomed I began to get very discouraged and mad at God. Why wasn’t He coming through for me in this “gift” of marriage that He had bestowed on so many but was witholding from me? I really gave up on Him at this point and for the next couple of years ate my way from 220 pounds to 270 pounds. Already overweight to start with, I was even more miserable and looked it. I was also very unhealthy and at the end of 2006 during a health crisis learned I had type II diabetes. I was forced to clean up my eating and went into it eager to prove I could do it with diet alone, no drugs for me!
I quickly lost 20 pounds on my own and then joined a Christian weight loss program at a local church that was very strict. Low calorie, restricted eating plan, weighing and writing down every ounce of food in a diary that was checked closely each week during a weekly meeting, a long list of “don’t eats” and daily studies on what to think and how to pray and turn our focus on God. It worked too, I lost another 30 pounds – 50 pounds lost in one year and I was ecstatic! I still had 70 pounds to lose to my goal weight, but with these tools I was doing it. I felt so good about myself and was even getting hopeful about my agenda again. I tried to keep pushing it back in my mind though, tried so hard to keep my focus on Christ and not what I wanted. I really didn’t understand what surrender meant though.
I thought if I surrendered something to God, then in His timing I would get it. I was sincere and really believed this. After all, it wasn’t like I was falling into a naming and claiming it kind of religion. All I’d ever wanted was the one thing, which had expanded now into “a loving and godly husband who would love & cherish me as God loved & cherished the church and who I would love and respect and care for” all the days that God ordained for us as man and wife. This was a good thing to desire, a good thing that I had seen God give to so many people and I still so struggled with why He had singled me out for the “gift” of singleness.
At the end of 2008 our Christian weight loss group came to an end and all through 2009 I have slowly given in and fallen back to my old eating habits. I’ve gained back more weight that I care to know about and avoid the scale – my clothing tells the story, getting tighter and tighter as the days and weeks go by. I’ve tried several times to “get back on track” with my eating only to fail again and again and I am miserable about how I look and how I feel and worried about my health. I even sent out a big long post to all my friends on Facebook about my weight loss journey and my plans and goals for this year – only to fail before I’d even started.
Enter Grace Walk. We started this Bible study at church on Sept 27th. A 1 hour DVD for 8 weeks along with a workbook. Sounded easy, no homework, no stress about not getting the daily work done like some other studies we’ve done; so I gladly agreed to participate. I missed the first session, and then the second but was able to borrow the DVD and watch at home. I was immediately struck by how different this study was and saw clearly that I was definitely a rules person and definitely the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. It just all made sense and even though I was terrified to do it, felt God had been leading me to this point and I did the surrender worksheet at the end of week two.
One of the items on the list was to surrender my right to be loved. With that item I finally began to get a glimmer of what surrendering really is. We surrender it ALL to God – even our rights. I’m not to have any expectation for more than what God gives me, and He’s already given me it all. He’s given me Jesus. Many times I have cried out to God, “Yes, You’ve given me Jesus but you gave [xxxxxxx] Jesus AND marriage to a loving, godly husband as well. Why can’t I have both? I should get both like so many other do!”
Surrendering my rights, my expectations – those things were very hard to surrender and I still find myself thinking, “I don’t get anything,” feeling so sorry for myself. “Why me God, why am I the one who doesn’t get this that You have given to so many?” But I surrendered my rights to anything more than what God has for me. His Word tells me that He has good plans for me and that He will work all things out for good. Even this. But what is better than a loving marriage? For years I was afraid God would change my heart and make me happy with my singleness and bring me to a place of being able to say how good it was that I never married because whatever it was that I finally saw He gave me was so much better. I didn’t want to come to that place. I'm not there yet either! I still feel myself fighting that, even though I have surrendered my right to this dream ever being fulfilled. I have to keep reminding myself.
Last week I had a shock – I came to Christ with an agenda in my hand and He was the answer to everything on my list. Jesus loves and cherishes me with the love that I’ve been looking for in a loving, godly husband. Jesus, just Jesus, only Jesus.
I am so in tears as I write this because I still want the rest, still grieving for the earthly husband that I surrendered, but I wonder if I hadn’t been hanging on so tightly to my agenda; if these past 10 years would have been full of more peace and rest instead of the striving they have contained. I don’t know. I do know I have a lot to learn about this grace that Jesus gave me 10 years ago and that I am just beginning to discover with His help.
