The Secret Life of Optimists

Okay, show of hands: how many people here have seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)? I have several friends who hate it, several who adore it, and several who look at me with confused but polite expressions on their faces when I ask if they've seen it.

On a basic level, Walter Mitty is a film about a hard-core day-dreamer in love with a girl at work he's never spoken to, who finds himself saddled with discovering the baffling whereabouts of a vital photograph ("Quintessence") missing from his workplace. We all like to pull for the underdog, especially one with a heart and imagination as endearing as Walter's. But at its core, the film is a celebration of imagination, optimism, friendship, art, adventure...all the things that make up the delightful parts of life.Walter Mitty works at Life Magazine and the company's motto will always inspire me:

"To see the world,
Things dangerous to come to,
To see behind walls,
Draw closer,
To find each other,
And to feel.
That is the purpose of life."

 I suppose the reason I love The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (apart from the stunning and artistic way the film was shot) is because it is a story about a person like me. A person with an imagination that colors his world brighter than usual. A person who has more than once spaced out in a conversation, totally enveloped in What Could Happen. A person who sees possibility everywhere, in everyone. A person who has within his mind, a million outcomes of a million situations and is poised just so, waiting to see which will really come to pass and where it might take him.

This first week of 2015 has been amazing. I am not exactly sure why except that I have lived every day with this glorious sensation of Just Around the River Bend practically sparking out of me. 2015 is, so far, an open year. I don't have many plans. Those I do have are just sketches, waiting to be filled with color by the adventures God lets me stumble across. Exciting things are lurking in the corners. I just know it. I don't have a reason for knowing it, but somehow I do. Seriously, put away your raised eyebrows. There are no secrets here. Just a flush on my cheeks and my heart beating a little smidgen faster than usual because something is coming. The unknown is all around me and there's something in the wind that makes me so terribly excited for this year. And yet, I feel a little like Jane and Michael Banks after Bert has done his rigmarole of: "You think...you...wink, you do a double-blink, you close your eyes and...."

Jane cocks her head, looks at Bert and says:

 "Is something s'posed to happen?"

That's how I feel right now. Is something s'posed to happen? Will it? I have my eye on several situations in friends' lives that could bloom into straight-up, real time fairy-tales or epic-saga adventures. I'm waiting for the next part of the story, conscious that any moment could catapult them (and me, vicariously) into a crazy, practically unheard-of new world. In my own life, things move along as usual. I spend my days doing life in technicolor. The people at the grocery-store are not just people. I mean, they are just people but not just people. I believe in the rich old truth that my life is a story and each component is part of that tale. Therefore, the man behind me in line at the grocery store could turn out to be important. The lady who cuts in front of me in traffic. The bank teller I saw twice in one day. The man in the window of the National Press Club Building. The woman whose package I rescued off the metro who I finally got back in contact with. My brain goes wild with the possibilities. When those people don't give me something memorable, I remedy the situation by doing something creative for them to remember. If I can't meet That Person, I'll be That Person. Call it what you will (fate, destiny, a horse), there's never a dull moment in this brain. I know bad stuff happens in life, but I know good stuff happens too, and it's the good stuff, the grace-moments in life that I wait for. They're there. They're everywhere. Some people just don't look for them or notice.

But living this secret life of brilliant hues has a flip-side: when life does turn out to be normal and the threads running across it seem to be weaving an average graham-colored bit of the tapestry, the heart-racing, flush-cheeked, eyes-sparkling existence begins to feel like a pacing tiger in a cage. I'm ready for the adventure. Where is it? I'm keeping a weather eye out for the next interesting person, the next impossibly beautiful moonrise, the next rose-red leaf silvered with frost, the next place to send an anonymous letter, the next way to secretly give a quiet blessing. It's an odd sort of discontentment, waiting for the peacock blues and currant reds and new-wheat greens in the tapestry of life to cover the graham-colors. When they don't come on their own, I make them myself, content in mixing dyes from the bits of everyday magic around me. I'm content with waiting, with letting wild hopes fly through my fingers each day, for there are always more hopes to be spent tomorrow. It's a luxury that optimists like myself can easily spare. But I will admit that our outlook can be exhausting,  for we spend hope at an extravagant rate and if it's a harsh master who would call it wasteful, our output is certainly tiring. I discussed this topic briefly with a friend this evening:

"Did you know it is slightly exhausting being an imaginative optimist? I mean, what's more tiring and frustrating: waiting for nothing to happen or waiting for anything to happen? In the first case you at least are fairly ready to stay where you are all your life. In the latter, you have the most delicious sense of 'any day now.'"

...or "any person now," or "any moment now," or "any page now," or "any conversation now," or "any query now." I don't believe the hope is poorly spent. I would always far rather be the optimist waiting with shining eyes and a laugh caught in her throat because anything could happen, than the pessimist who pulls on his tan trench-coat and trudges to work through snow whose beauty he can't even see because he can think of nothing but what a mess it'll make of the roads. I would always rather be That Person than a thousand Anyone Elses. I would always rather be a half-short, past-plump girl who makes generous messes in the kitchen than the tall, slender model who can't allow herself a slice of sourdough toast. I would always rather be the girl sleepy-eyed and smiling from an overdose of well-marked books than the frowning, tired-eyed girl who gave up reading because her schedule didn't allow it. I'd always rather wake up believing with my whole heart that impossible things can happen than going to bed each night satisfied that nothing did.

So let the tiger pace; it's striped and tawny and beautiful. Let people pass me by; they'll remember I smiled their direction. Let real photographers buy cameras; I just ask a small, friendly moment to capture the fragile beauties with my (now contentedly outdated) iPhone. Let real artists paint masterpieces; I just want my little, dusty watercolors and a brush not losing too many bristles.

Welcome to The Secret Life of Optimists, in Technicolor, 2015.

To The Girl Who Has Three Lives

Dear Girl Who Has Three Lives:
     (or more):
      I know how you feel.
There's the You who works in the coffee shop or the church office or goes to college or the You who stands in her first semester as a teacher with twenty kids who are calling her "Miss So-and-So" and expecting she'll actually teach them stuff about life. Or, if you're like me, there's the You who spends the majority of the week taking care of, playing with, and teaching two precious little girls whose boundless curiosity and ceaseless energy shows you what your Mom has been doing since the birth of your older brother (times four).
There's the You who comes home tired from that other You and wants peace and quiet and a harmonious family. But there is dinner to be made and chores to keep up with and the harmonious family has gone off-key for an hour or two and life is crazy. This was the first You, and is known so well that it fits like a groove, despite its eccentricities. This You has an amazing family that misses her and she misses them and the disjointedness of lives trying to click back together while spinning in hyper-speed--your days off coinciding with their days away--and it's tough to steal moments of normalcy. But this version of You craves those moments and sometimes wonders what it would be like to return to the time when it was the only You and there was time to hang up your clothes and bother to put the bobby-pins back in their dish and that stack of To-Be-Read books was actually diminishing at a discernable pace.
Then, of course, there's the You of dreams. There's the You who, while steaming that milk, folding those invoices, making those calls, or teaching those math lessons, keeps up a secret life behind the scenes of hopes and dreams and long-term goals. For me, that's my writing. A thousand words typed at an unholy hour because every sensible, conscionable minute of normal-people is taken up by those other two Mes. This You might be pursuing music, art, publication, photography, a business, or something else. This You is usually the one who falls, by default, into disrepair because it is the more quiet You. It is sometimes shy and always willing to bend to reality. Dreams can be pushed off, tabled, quietened. This You isn't really all that perishable and if you close down the Word document for three months, the repercussions aren't what they would be if you stopped showing up to work for the same period of time or shut off communication with those dearest to you.

For each of these Yous, You could justifiably devote a whole life, in theory. But theories bend to achievement and everyone realizes we can't claim seventy-two hours for a day in which to be all three. And yet, Girl, you are trying to be all three. I am trying to be all three. Is it wrong? Is it crazy? Should you give up the dreams or the job or the family?

No.

It's not wrong, it's only a little crazy, and you should definitely not give up your dreams, your family, and the job God has placed you in (unless He shows you otherwise). One life crammed into one's head is enough to make most people overwhelmed. But to those of use who are juggling three, how can we keep sane?

I've been thinking. I am barely home these days between one thing and another and weddings. On any given Saturday, my room is covered with cast off clothing that I was too tired to put away after coming home from a fifteen-hour day. My bobby-pins never make it into the dish. I wear jeans when the weather is eighty-five because I really couldn't spare the extra eight minutes to shave my legs and heaven forbid I get in the shower and find no shampoo because when you're showering at 6:30 a.m., there's no one awake to fetch it for you. So I've been giving more thought than usual to how the Three-Lived-Girl can keep sane and it comes down to Jim Eliot:

"Wherever you are, be all there."

When you're at work, be entirely at work. When you're at home, be entirely at home. When you're working on that painting, that story, that song, that product, be one-hundred-percent there in that moment. For me, that means shutting off my 3G data on my phone at work, leaving texts till a more convenient hour when I'm blogging or writing, or lesson-planning, and leaving my phone upstairs when I'm around the house. I love technology and social media has blessed me with a covey of friends I would otherwise have never met. But technology is deceptive in that it convinces you that things have to be done RIGHT NOW. And the girl already living three lives can't afford to have them bleed into one another. If I am trying to teach math concepts to a three year-old and answer a five year  old's questions about how Indians killed buffalo and answer a Facebook message about wedding plans and reply to a comment on a blog and to text the recipe I made up for fish tacos to the sister who is making dinner because I can't be home to help because I'm headed an hour into the city to go a bible-study and I'm trying to do it ALL AT ONCE, I will crumble. I don't know about you, but I can feel it crumble. I can feel my resolve weakening, my heart becoming downcast, and my soul overwhelmed. I decided to try Jim Eliot's theory out last week and give myself completely to the tasks at hand one at a time. What I found was a sense of joy in accomplishing that one task instead of angst over the twenty-seven others left to be done. Yes, there were still twenty-seven tasks, but one can meet a single foe on level ground far easier than being dog-piled by an entire company.

Wherever you are, Girl With Three Lives, be all there. In the mornings, give one hundred percent of your attention to Jesus and focus your eyes on Him from the start. At work, give full attention to the joy of building into the lives around you. When you're home, leave the virtual world connected to a charger and play a game of Scrabble or watch an old Disney film together. When you're pursuing dreams, friends, or long-cherished goals, give it your all.

That's how we keep all the balls in the air. Focus.

"Excuse me, sir, he is a Prince!"

Would you go with me if we rolled down streets a fire? Would you hold on to me tighter as the summer sun got higher? Oh, and would it be okay if I didn't know the way?

-Josh Turner

The fun part of life is that it never turns out how you think it will. Sometimes it is just a little scary in a "I think this is good for me but it isn't my hobbit-hole" way. In the past week, I've applied to be a part-time nanny (and will be interviewing early this week), Sarah heard that she was accepted for a summer internship for Generation Joshua (meaning she'll be living in Leesburg all summer), we got our own intern/apprentice for our landscape business, I committed to a rather complex out-of-town fundraiser for our Romania Missions Trip, and I saw an old friend get married to her sweet man. (And they had homemade soft pretzels there. SOFT PRETZELS. The way to my heart is through soft pretzels.) In between these things, I have been editing my next novel, running errands and working for Dad, and trying not to freak out about scheduling. Oh. And we're down to one car for the whole entire family. I'm trying not to panic about the fact that if I DO get this job, it means that I will be thrown into the world of I Have To Get To Work And I Have No Car. Ahem. But God kind of just placed this in my lap and Mama thought I should at least step into it and see what's what.

Because sourdough toast deserves a glory-moment

I told Abigail Taylor today that I have a funny strain in my character: I like adventure and I like new challenges. But I will step forward into something and then get paralyzed with fright while I'm waiting, realizing I left my safe shore and can't touch bottom anymore and I'm not even certain if the other shore will hold weight. I'm very hobbit-like that way. About this nanny-job, I told her: "What's the worst the woman can say, 'Yes'?" But I'm trusting that if God brought this about, He'll bring me through, and if it isn't the right thing right now, He'll cut off the opportunity. Still, it's stressing me a little bit. Sheesh. I mean, I love my cozy little rut of earning no money and being a writer and not having to worry about an employer outside my Dad...even though I've often thought it'd be fun to have some sort of job. 

Anyway, that's an odd little rant. If you think to pray for me, it would be much appreciated! I realize I've been a little spacey and vague on this blog. If you have any questions about particular aspects of my life that I have forgotten to address, do, please, ask me about them and I'll do my best to update you! I've been getting a bit of reading done. My nose is currently in Jenny Freitag's work and P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters which is fascinating. I love reading authors' letters...a person's letters give such great insight into who that person was, and how they viewed themselves, their work, and the world around them. It's almost better than a journal, really.

Let's see what else I can think of....oh! I saw Divergent and really enjoyed it! In my opinion, it was better than the Hunger Games movies...more hopeful, somehow. And Triss is a more relatable character than Katniss, for me. I also watched Northanger Abbey for the first time last night and--apart from a couple minor things--it was fabulous. Henry Tilney is such a chump. <3 A man who would tease me like that with a smile like that and a heart like that....eeeeeesh. And if a guy ever quotes his line to me during a dance, my heart will be gone:

"You must allow me one smirk, then we can return to being rational again."

(Incidentally, the title-quote has nothing to do with this post.) 

Queso with Strangers: How Moe's Made My Day

Today was not an unusual day, except that Moe's Southwest Grill was giving out free queso. And really, any day when something as expensive and addictive as queso is free is most definitely a day to write on the calendar and love thoroughly. I'm a thrifty gal, and of course I couldn't justify driving 25 minutes to the nearest Moe's just to get a free something that isn't exactly good for the waistline.

Thank heaven I remembered I had to lesson-plan and do some grocery shopping.

Sarah (la sister) objected that she had lesson-planned at Moe's last time so we young, aspiring teachers parked in the no-man's bit of the strip mall and popped into Starbucks. Unfortunately Starbucks - which also boasts the qualities of being expensive and addictive - wasn't having a Come Love Us Because We Give You Nice Things For Free day.

Boo-hoo and sob. 

Since I'm not being paid for teaching right now, my wallet was quite literally empty except for a plethora of dimes and quarters; I would like to say paying with change is hipster or preppy, but it's neither: it's penny-pinching college-student at its most honest. (And I'm not even in college. Oh boy.)
    I fumbled with my coins, trying to sift the dimes from the pennies and willing it all to come to $4.22 (Please explain why those divine Raspberry Mochas cost your birthright). Sarah finally took pity on me and handed me a couple quarters to help out. The poor dude behind the counter waited patiently and didn't laugh at my teetering stacks of coinage piled on the counter; he actually told me it was all right that I was holding up the entire joint. (I'm not sure I believed him.) Raspberry mocha in hand, I retreated to the outdoor patio where I was soon buried in the delights of planning how to teach a passion for writing to my young students.
    The sun was warm and jovial, and life was good despite my new position as Queen of Awkward; in fact, I had pretty much decided that it couldn't get any better when a young Asian man wearing sunglasses came from across the parking lot with a bag from Moe's and established himself--queso, burrito, laptop and all--at a table nearby. I chattered to Sarah about this and that (probably in a louder tone than I realized, being the talkative sort.) She answered with a lazy, comfortable monosyllable now and then.

 "Come on," I said, "Just let me know when you're finished so we can go to Moe's and get our free queso." I didn't think anyone was listening--aren't I the only one who notices other peoples' conversations?

The Queen of Awkward was wrong, of course.

Our neighbor turned around with the hugest, friendly grin and raised his cup of queso in the air like Bacchus's horn. "Yeah! You really should go get some.
    I started laughing, which is my way of saying "You totally just made my day right now," and Queso-Man joined in.
  "You know," he said with another dazzling smile, "it's not very crowded over there right now. You should go." And he turned back to his laptop and resumed his lunch, and life should have proceeded as normal.

 Except for me it didn't. For me, it was one of life's lightening-bolt moments. He and I laughed over the oddity of being fellow free-queso-lovers, and in that laughter something transferred; some tiny, fragile, gossamer connection. One slender thread linking perfect strangers together: a moment woven into timelessness.
And now I want to be that person who holds a vat of queso aloft like a champagne flute and butts into a conversation. I want to spend the tiny moments of life like a sociable spider making webs of a thousand infinitesimal connections. People complain of wandering through their lives in aimless solitude; they vow the world is vacant and void - and so it might seem to a webless spider.
  But the guy with the smile and the queso knows different; he knows, as I've learned, that community is not a lumped-together achievement that comes one day and lasts the rest of your life. Community is a thousand threads spun from a thousand moments. It's the thing that keeps us connected in our frail humanness. It's love - the practical love Jesus always had the time for...my queso was the Canaanite woman's jug of water. The spider's web is an intricate thing and it does take work. It's talking to a person you've never met before about the simplest, most silly thing like queso, or the weather, or someone else's electric-yellow platform heels. My partner-in-amusement had no way of telling that I was feeling penniless, awkward, and ashamed of my blood-from-a-stone Raspberry Mocha; all he knew was that he liked queso and so did I, and it was worth the effort of spinning one more thread.

 So here's to smiling at strangers. Here's to outdoor tables, awkward moments, Asian gentlemen, unexpected connections, community, boldness, and the simple, over-looked bits of life.

Here's to free queso.

Love is a pox...

I seldom indulge in doubt.

But there are some things as a kid that the adults said were "givens" in life that I'd always written off as exaggerations. I'd always doubted a certain set of things. You know the sort. "Time will go so fast ten years will pass like a month." Really? Come on now-I'm not that dumb. The "time-flies" promise was something I always denied. At seventeen, eighteen, I was not ready to accept it. Not quite yet. But my reticence to acknowledge there might be something in it after all was weakening, though I wasn't aware.

Because this year has been huge in one way: A pox has broken out. The pox. 

When you're fourteen years old you sit on the bed with mama beside you and talk about "the future" in comfortable terms of far-awayness. You sigh and lament the fact that there's nobody around to marry, were you old enough anyway. "Don't worry," mama says. "Once it starts happening you won't know what has started. Everyone will start dropping like flies."

You snort.

You chuckle in a "Yeah, like that will every happen" way.

You forget about it.

Until you're twenty. And then. Then. Then the pox does break out.

After coming home from a trip for the second time this fall and finding (for the second time!) that another friend has found herself a "matchless match" (and what's up with this happening every time I leave town?) I felt rather kooky. Was it just me or was there an inordinate amount of "matches" being made this year? How many was it? An alarming amount, it seemed. Could it be that Mama was right and once it started it wouldn't stop? Ahem.

This afternoon I sat down and decided to count--for sanity's sake--how many friends and acquaintances of mine had begun a relationship {or were bordering on it} this year? The total took me by storm.

14.

14 couples.

That makes 28 if you're counting. But who's counting?

28 people I know (more or less) who have coupled off this year. And this isn't counting the people I know who have gotten married or are engaged currently.

O.o

I feel...

...not jealousy.

More like bewilderment.

 Confusion and a little kick-back defense to find that those adults were right all along.

Love is a pox. A pox the whole world succumbs to by and by.

Well jeegley-clambake. This is a to-do.

It's one of those cases where you find the world flying out of control, out of your grasp, and growing up suddenly looks rather serious and cock-eyed and not at all like you thought it would be. It's exciting because obviously some things are finally moving along and little people are growing up and meeting people and loving people and marrying people and having more little people. But it's going so fast.

A busy summer and fall of campaigning, ministry, and writing.

I finally slow down, turn around, and three of my best friends are in relationships.

Several good friends follow suit.

I hear tell rumors of the same happening in my extended circles.

What on earth happened? I'll tell you. We grew up. And once you grow up beautiful things start to happen. Beautiful, scary, adventurous things. It's real now and I find the adults were right.

...about love.

...about time.

...about life.

I have seen things change so fast it'll give you whiplash. I actually started a Pinterest-board because of this new revelation of having grown up. It's inspiring new ideas, new thoughts, new inspirations. So here's to adventure. Here's to wearing a neck-brace if you have to. Here's to buckling your seat-belt, checking your parachute, and waiting for the drop.

Here's to a bit of daring.

to love at all is to be vulnerable.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken."

-C.S. Lewis.

The Lord has been teaching me much in the last month or so. :) Some of the lessons are only half-learned, some of them still on the road ahead. But I am learning one lesson that--though it is still fresh and raw and a tad painful, I felt that I needed to share.

I speak of loneliness.

You see, this issue didn't come in the manner I was accustomed to seeing it in. It didn't come from watching yet another period drama and wishing I had a guy of my own. It didn't come from watching other friends' romances and wishing dismally for my own. No. It sneaked in at a back door. It came from an unexpected source.

It came in through one of the greatest joys of my life.

Bet you didn't see that coming, did you? By now I know you're wise to the cause for my loneliness. Yes, the Lord began putting His finger on this subject when Daniel and Abigail started a courtship. I prayed so so hard for a courtship between them. I had long nights of mental agony over the possibility of it not happening. The Lord blessed our family with the exciting news. Daniel and Abigail were officially starting a courtship. I was ecstatic. (and still am.)

But something unexpected began seeping in. Loneliness. The realization that something was going to change, whether I liked it or not. Daniel and Abigail have each other now, and though they both love me as much as ever, it is natural and right that I should take a back-stage seat and let them sail out of the harbor and onto the open seas.

And that was hard for me. I'm a passionate little creature and those I love, I love with a fierceness un-matchable. It made my heart ache fiercely to realize that I had to love them enough to let go.

That was the first lesson. I weeped a little weep over it one day and the Lord asked me clearly: "Are you willing to do this for me? Are you willing to be left behind? Because I need you here for now. Not out on the high seas. That is for them. This day I want you in the harbor, working among the docks."

Ouch. Lesson One choked down and swallowed and saved for a later date when I might need it again. I tried to let go completely. Of Daniel, of Abigail. Of my own need to feel loved and to have a special place in someone's heart. I thought I had let go. I really did. And then came the first, beautiful weekend Abigail and Daniel spent together as an official "couple."

It was hard for me.

Hard enough that I pinched myself repeatedly and scolded myself for being a selfish girl and then felt like bursting into tears every half-second. I was confused. Hadn't I let them go out to sea? Wasn't I content to stay in my harbor? What was wrong with me? Was it jealousy?

My eyes widened at this idea, but as I examined my heart I found (to my great relief) it was not jealousy. It was misplaced love. I love Daniel so much and I love Abigail so much that I was...well...to sound quite dragon-ish, I was hoarding them.

My Lord and I had another conversation on the subject:

"Lord, I love them so much! It is hard to let them go!"
Do you love them?"If this isn't love than I don't know what is. It hurts enough."
But do you really love them? Because I've given you an example of true love...love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy it does not boast, is it not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking...

By this time I knew where the conversation was going, and I tucked Lesson Two away beside Lesson One. I was getting quite a collection, you see. I asked Jesus to help me love Abigail and Daniel the right way. To love them selflessly and to rejoice in this beautiful answer to my prayers. My heart was more cheerful and I felt that the serenity I'd tacked onto my face was becoming natural and unforced. But I suppose I still had rather more of the coal than the diamond about me because God was not quite finished. He's a Trinity, after all, and likes to give me gifts in threes....(actually, most of my best friendships in my life have been threesomes. Odd, that!)

Yup. Lesson Three still to be learned. He has sent one of my dearest friends to work at a camp all summer long--something she's prayed about for a long time. Since they began attending another church, I seldom see two of my other long-time best friends anymore. There is still no knight on the horizon.

I began to grumble within myself:

 "Lord, You're taking away my dearest friends and companions! You're changing everything I love so well as it is! What is it You are trying to teach me?"
Do you remember our conversation, my dear child?"Yes," I admitted.
And do you not remember that I have asked you to stay behind? His voice was not harsh or exacting, only gentle and grave.
"Yes." 

By this time I couldn't stand to be downstairs amid all the hubbub. I had a headache. It was about 10:30. I said my good-nights and hurried to get ready for bed, turned out the light, and took up the conversation again. (This time with some tears thrown in for emotional relief. I'd been needing a good cry.) "Lord...it does seem a very hard lesson to learn...being left behind. Why is it that You want me to be alone?"

I could almost hear Him laugh. I could almost see Him smile. Rachel, He said, am I not large enough to replace everyone? Abigail, and Daniel, and Maryanna, and Joanna, and Morgan and Katie and all the rest of them? I am the Lord of the Universe. Can't I fill the holes they leave in your life? Can't I fill them so you don't even know they are there, or ever had been there? Depend on Me. In Me and only in Me is true joy, and affection and Love. I am all you need.

His voice in my heart quieted me, dried my tears, and lulled me to sleep. Lesson Three. Learned for real this time. 

I share this with you, hoping you know that I'm not perfect. I've not arrived. For all I know there's still a Lesson Four ahead. Okay. I'll even confess that the last conversation related...yeah...(up there ^) only transpired last night.

It's that new. 

It's that fresh. 

But it's that important.

 I share these things with you because I know that some of you girls are in a similar spot. God is leading you in a quiet path of seeming loneliness. New relationships aren't happening, and old ones are changing. Fact is, you aren't even sure you want the change if it hurts so much. You see the beautiful things the Lord is doing, and yet it hurts so much you aren't sure if the old shabby things weren't the best after all. Recently on Google+ I posted this status: (Yes, vanity! ;) 

Learning to let go of How Things Were is the only painful part of receiving the gift of How Things Will Be...there is always that little moment of panic when one begins to wonder whether the old ways were pleasantest after all. But the Will Be is the real joy, the real end...everything else is just shamming about and Pretending. 

I hope this post encouraged some of you, boosted a spirit or two, and did a bit of good. But if it didn't do any of those things and if I am the only one who can relate, I know one thing. It was good for me. Thanks for reading. :) 

                       Love,

                              Rachel

Man Cannot Live on Daydreams Alone...

I have already confessed that I am a Romantic. Entirely. I like nothing better than to hear a good love-story, or watch a BBC period-drama. My favorite dreams are those in which I get married. I've always been that way, and I assume I always will.
My greatest desire (second to living for Christ) is to be a wife and mother. A wife to a man who will undoubtedly have his fault and foibles, but to whom I will be a help-meet and encourager, a companion and the love of his life. A mother to a host of children who will go out and do Kingdom Work. Our home will be a castle and I'll be queen.
It's a fond wish of mine, and I admit, at times, to spending too much time daydreaming about it. But since I graduated the Lord has been convicting me of a certain area we single daughters too often overlook. And it is this:

It's okay to have a life. It's good to have a life.

Now let me explain. In the words of an older woman I was talking to about this topic:

"The godly men are looking for a woman who is living a joyful, vibrant life. They don't want the girls sitting around waiting for a man to complete them. They want to marry a whole woman who is living life to the fullest, not a mousy day-dreamer who mopes through all her single days."

And you know, it's true? Think about it from a guy's perspective. What sort of woman will be the better help-meet? The girl who sat knitting and sighing over the thought of one day being a help-meet, or the girl who was gaining new skills, meeting the needs of those around her, helping out in any way she could until her man arrived?
Who does he want? A girl who can't exist in any productive and profitable way without his constant attention and affirmation, or a girl who knows the nitty-gritty and is content to aid her husband's plans and dreams even when he temporarily forgets her need for tenderness and loving attention?
That's a skill that we single daughters have plenty of opportunity to learn. We can practice and train to be joyful, vibrant women with full lives in this season when we don't have our man here to love us. This is prime time to grow in our walks with the Lord and learn to rely on Him and only Him for our contentment and unwavering love. Let's not waste these precious years, girls. If we can learn how to live now, we will be a double-blessing to our husbands in that Someday. Cherish your dreams, and don't cast romance aside entirely...I know I don't. :) But truly girls, I think we could all do with a little less daydreaming and a little more living. After all, we don't want to be the woman who, in her old age, looks back to her youth and sees a life of empty yesterdays. This season is the only one like it in life. Let's not spend them playing Fancy's Fool. Let's live life to the hilt, and trust in the Lord to bring us our man in His timing.

Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.   

God tells us to delight in Him and He will give us the desires of our hearts. He was the One who put them there, and He'll follow through. As my dear friend, Abigail said, "God doesn't give us empty desires." :)
  In closing I wanted to share a quote that I found in a very unlikely place, (The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan) but that has been such a comfort to me in the Hard To Wait times:

"If I am to marry, some blessed man is destined for me. He may be at my elbow, or at the antipodes. It matters not for go where I will, do what I will, sooner or later, at the time appointed by Heaven, we will meet, and nothing will prevent it."
   ~Sarah Morgan

Have a blessed day, dear friends! ~Rach