There’s a long list of things that I wish I would have accomplished by 25.
No. That’s not an encouraging way to start off this train of thought.
Starting over.
Okay, but how am I supposed to be grateful when it feels like there are a multitude of prayers hanging in the balance between me and God, the elephant in the room of our awkward candlelit table for two?
Does anyone else feel this way? That sometimes we have more than a simple hallelujah to say after we throw up our hands in worship? Maybe we’re not overcome by sheer gratitude, but feel the stinging in our heart and at the corners of our eyes from the prayers unanswered?
Okay thank God. Because that’s how I feel now that I’m turning twenty-five.
Providence and Pain.
Like I wish the world would come to a screaming halt so me and God can go over the growing list of prayers that I feel he should have answered, asking him what better things he has out there to do. I mean, he is the King of the universe, no?
It shouldn’t be that hard.
But birthdays seem to get harder the older I get. When I was younger and in seminary, they were full of excitement and the promise of good things to come around the corner.
Expectations didn’t matter as much when I was younger as they seem to now.
So what changed?
Stress. Pain. Hurt.
You know those things.
When I was younger I could look past the hurtful possibilities and focus on the things I was hoping would come about. It almost seemed like as difficult as things would get, there was no doubt they were going to pass soon. The sun was always on its merry way up, and I just had to hold on a little longer: wait for Gandalf to ride over the crest of the hill and bring said sun along with him.
My gosh: how the definition of “a little longer” has changed along with me by twenty-five.
I used to look over my shoulder and sigh deeply on having a difficult weekend. That weekend would turn into a week, and I’d be at the end of my rope until I felt the light shining again and me and Jesus could look back and pat each other on our respective backs for making it through.
Now those long weeks are turning into months, and slowly those months into years.
One almost wishes he could ground Peter Pan, and beg him for even one of his happy thoughts while Wendy and the boys fly off to Neverland. I think it would have taken a little more than a happy thought and a sprinkle of pixie dust to get me off the ground.
I mean, how hopeful can one be while continuing to walk the venerable “dark valleys” that we sing about so often in church and are immortalized in contemporary christian music?
Providence and Pain.
Maybe some of us know that feeling of asking for a raise. We do our best to appear as if we don’t need one, and in the end we sell ourselves short and ask for a pay margin far below what we would have been promised. Many times as a musician I’ve (well, I’ve gotten paid nothing before…) given my “usual rate” to a venue or private party only to have them agree to pay it in a heartbeat.
How disheartening.
If I would have expected a higher number, or maybe even waited for them to suggest a number, I could have gotten paid much more than I was hoping to be.
What if, the older I get, the more I treat God as a stingy boss I don’t trust? What if I’m starting to view him as a flighty venue and not as a generous donor, or even an agent who wants the highest payment possible for me?
What if my expectations should be getting higher?
Providence and Pain.
Providence teaches us to trust in the Lord to provide.
Period.
Not that He will provide the bare minimum. Nor that He will provide twenty percent while we slave for the other eighty. Not even to cheat us into doing it ourselves.
Jaweh-Jireh. On the mountain, the Lord will provide.
Maybe you remember Abraham, who received a Word from the Lord that was terrible even to speak aloud. Do you remember what happened to him? Did he end up drawing even a drop of blood from his only beloved son?
No. Instead, God provides.
Oh that word. How it keeps me up at night.
How my pain has spoken into the desires of the good things I used to have, and convinced me that the knife will fall. That no angel will arrive to stop the blow. That I am the only one who can provide.
I’ve become like a child too scared to run down the stairs on Christmas. Instead I hide under my covers and swallow the fear that there’s nothing under the tree, end tell myself to be grateful for what I already have. Why do I weep in my misery?
Pain.
I’ve been hurt.
And my pain scares me into expecting less of the Provider.
Pain clouds the remembered Providence of the past and replaces it with the memories of hurt, my unanswered prayers, divine debts unpaid. In short, the things I feel like I’m missing.
Providence reminds me that He will provide for me.
Not as my final recourse, when the mast is down and my sails are in tatters. But first. Long before the storm is even spotted. And the wild thing is:
He wants to provide for me.
I’ve seen him provide for me. An opening at a camp that I wasn’t expecting to get into. A call from an Italian friend inviting me back to Italy, after failing to get a job I was so confident about. Offers to be paid more than I thought and exactly what I needed.
And so much more. Yet I continue to lower my expectations of said Providence every time I get hurt.
In doing this, I convince myself that He doesn’t in fact want the best for me. That he’ll never cash in on the blessings promised those who follow him, or worse: they’ll be smaller blessings that I somehow missed along the way, and should have been grateful for.
My friend: you can’t miss the small things when you’re expecting an abundance.
They’re just part of the abundance.
Providence and Pain.
But you’ll miss the abundance if you only expect small things. In fact, you might not even trust that the abundance is coming. Worst of all, might live as if this mystical abundance will never come, like the dogs that wait for the scraps from the master’s table. They’re not being rewarded.
They’re surviving.
My friend, the Provider has much more than scraps in mind for you.
He did not fashion you out of clay to survive.
Going into twenty-five, I’m going to live as if this abundance is real. As if the Provider really does in fact want to shower grace upon grace on me, and waits like an expectant father for me to unwrap the gifts under the tree.
As if He wants me to thrive.
Oh, and this Providence? I’m going to abandon myself to it.