Today is my 30th birthday, and being such
a monumental milestone, has had me thinking a lot about my life. Last night was sleepless for some reason;
part of that time was spent wrestling the devil’s lies. He always likes to point out everything that
I don’t have.
Satan: “You’ve
made it to 30 and what do you have to show for it? You don’t have the body you always dreamed
of; you didn’t go to graduate school like you imagined; you had to drop out of
your low-paying teaching career; you still don’t have children; you’re not
famous and influential…”
Me: “You’re
right…I’m a complete loser; I’m always sick; I basically can’t do anything I
set my mind to…WAIT A MINUTE! I’ve heard
those lines before! You used that ploy
with Eve in the Garden of Eden. The one
tree she couldn’t have—that’s what you capitalized on. But what do
I have? I wasn’t born and raised in a dilapidated
hut half starving like so many children in the world. I wasn’t raised in a ghetto and given to
street gangs. I’ve never known fear for
my life, fear for basic needs, not even fear for love. My family was always there for me when I
wanted to go home. So what if I had become everything you said…
Suppose I had had the culturally modeled body, never
got scoliosis, and had much more self-confidence? I probably would have been liked by my peers,
would have developed social ease and confidence, would have gone much further
in my youth toward worldly progress. I
probably would have gained an interest in fashion. I would have been engrossed in speaking the
language of the world and would have been at ease among those my age. Maybe I would have pursued a career on
stage. I always admired my voice as a
girl to a vice. Maybe I would have gone
to graduate school. I would have been
rich and famous. But where would I have found
the husband I have now? How would I have
known the deep, abiding love of God shown me through the church on account of
my trials? I would have been empty,
void. Maybe I would have ended up one of
those stories on a news headline: “Famous singer has everything going for her,
tragically ends her life” or “Famously wealthy singer poor for love, gets
another divorce.”
Paul, the great, ambitious, energetic, zealous,
famous Pharisee of Pharisees said it all in Philippians 3:4-11: “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to
put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law,
a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was
to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I
consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I
have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in
him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in
Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow,
to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
When I was
eight years old, God put that seed of desire in my heart to know Christ. Throughout my youth, I prayed that very
verse; I prayed for the power of his resurrection, for the fellowship of
sharing in his sufferings, and to become like him in his death. I prayed that I would be a window through
which people would see Christ’s glory.
As a girl unaware of trial, I didn’t really know what I was praying from
a physical perspective. Now at 30, I
look back and realize that those prayers meant that the Rachel of the world,
that could have been, had to be demolished.
That meant that the culturally idolized body figure had to go (i.e., scoliosis). It meant that the desire for fame and self-confidence
had to go with it, with all that that implies.
It meant that my life had to be modeled after Christ—a path of
suffering. “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with
suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him
not” (Isaiah 53:3). But it also meant
that in place of fame, I would be given Christ’s glorious righteousness; in place
of self-confidence, I would be given His power; in place of earthly loves that
end in death, I would be given agape love that ends in eternal life. Oh what a blessing that I did not choose my
own path! I would have chosen
death. God chose life for me. Blessed be His holy name!
The
trouble with giving me His righteousness, though, is that God had to strip away
my self-righteousness and expose what I really looked like in His sight—“All of
us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up
like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away” (Isaiah 64:6). That has destroyed my self-esteem; it has
exalted Christ. It has made me weak and
stripped me of all self-confidence—hence my many sickly years—but it has shown
me the faithful power and love of my God to physically, emotionally, and
spiritually care for me. It has guaranteed
the death of my earthly dreams for self-exaltation, but these have been
replaced with greater gifts of deep and abiding love shown to me through a Christian
family, church family, and my own dear and faithful husband.
Are not
the gifts so much greater than what was removed? The gifts are of eternal value! That which was destroyed in my life is
passing away! Praise God from whom all
blessings flow! I praise Him for
answering those youthful prayers—for indeed making me a window through which
people can see His power and glory at
work. I pray He gives me grace to stand
firm in that realization, un-swayed by the devil’s taunting. May a life of dark providence serve as the
backdrop to the glorious strands of golden tapestry that God is writing by His
own hand on my life for the praise and honor of Jesus Christ!
