This was first written as a Thanksgiving post in November of 2021. I thought it appropriate to repost this today on our 44th wedding anniversary. We continue to work on getting the steps right, and we remain 100% committed to the plan and the purpose God has for us as husband and wife.
Writing is such an essential part of my day-to-day living. I miss it when I am not doing it, and yet, at times the words do not come. That has been the reality of my present situation for quite a few weeks now. My mind was full; my heart was too, but making a connection between those two parts of me seemed an impossibility especially where pen, paper and computer are concerned, so I attempted to ignore them. Something was wrong, but identifying exactly what was an impossibility.
I know now that something was akin to wanderlust—not exactly a desire to travel, but a desire for change. It came to the surface while my husband and I were having lunch. We had both been thinking about it, but it seemed such a crazy idea neither one of us said anything…that is, until our thoughts intertwined, and we spoke the words. “Let’s return to the country.” So, here we are preparing to pack our belongings and put a for sale sign in the yard of our recently purchased home. Actually, we did that before I was able to finish this post. The house sold, and we are off to the country once again.
There will not be as much country as there was at Sweetgrass, but the silence and solitude of rural living await. Call us sojourners. We do like change, my husband, not necessarily the moving part, but the change that comes with it. We both enjoyed the many relocations occupying much of our married life. The personal and professional experiences we have both known have been many. Our life together has been quite a dance. Now in retirement even as the landscape of our lives seems to continually change, the dance continues.
Our marital dance is not unlike that of others. Over the years we have struggled a bit with who should lead. We have stepped on one another’s toes. Sometimes we have gotten the steps all wrong. After forty-three years of marriage, we still do not always agree on the music. We have learned though that some of our more awkward and unrhythmic steps have led to some of our most beautiful dances. The truth is my husband and I are about as opposite as opposites can get. We knew that long before someone suggested we compare the results of our individual Myers Briggs with one another. For those of you who are familiar, you will understand how different we are when I say he is an ESTJ. I am an INFP. For us, the Myers Briggs is an absolutely realistic assessment of who we are individually. The results tell us our dance will not always be rhythmic. Him being the black and white head guy and me being the heart girl who sees a whole lot of gray…we both know his head and my heart say, “We will figure this out.” We also know none of this could ever work, would have ever worked had we not both known the One who controls the music and every step of our dance. Allowing God to choreograph our marriage dance is the only way to get it right…the only way for any married couple to get it right whether they are absolutely compatible or tend to step on one another’s toes.
We neither one knew how Myers Briggs would assess us when we married all those years ago. In fact, we were unaware we needed insight into our personalities in order to get married. We were in love. What more might any couple need? We made the decision to be in this for better or for worse and all the rest. It saddens us both that more than fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce in this country. In a throw-away society such as the one in which we now live, marriages dissolve easily. Those who see the grass as greener or the circumstances better in another place or with someone else fail to recognize marriage is difficult even under the best of circumstances. That is an unchanging reality. Marriages built on invented truths and imagined illusions do not last, but try explaining that to someone who has all the answers or someone seeking the things of which fairytales are made. Humans are deeply flawed—all of us, but try convincing someone of that when they recognize everyone else’s flaws but their own. God makes ALL things new…There is not another human being upon this earth who will EVER do that for another human being, but try explaining that to those who have made the world and the material things of it their gods.
M. Scott Peck aptly wrote, “Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terraasin of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost. While this is obvious, it is something that most people to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and unsure, their views of the world narrow and misleading. By the end of middle age most people have given up the effort. They feel certain that their maps are complete, and their Weltanschauung (worldview) is correct (indeed, even sacrosanct), and they are no longer interested in new information. It is as if they are tired. Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.”
While I allow that some people might give up because they are tired, not everyone does. Some chart their course with arrogance, pride, selfishness and jealousy. These people want easy. They want comfort as they navigate their maps according to their specific agendas. Peck says, “If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.” Caring so little about the effect their actions have on others and even less about truth, they ignore the Almighty and Omnipotent Mapmaker especially when the purpose and plan He has for their lives takes them in a different direction than the one they choose for themselves.
In the words of C.S. Lewis, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” Despairing seems an appropriate word to describe so many among us these days. Still, some settle on the status quo refusing to consider growth and change. We must stop allowing culture to guide us, step out of our comfort zone and put God first in all we do. Transformation comes when our worldview based in truth—God’s truth—allows us to see our individual maps from a renewed perspective.
Some reading this, might consider my worldview to be both narrow and misleading and that I am a person not interested in growth and change. They would be wrong. Mine is a Biblical worldview—sacrosanct, yes, but neither narrow nor misleading. Secular culture is critical of anyone whose view of reality is based on biblical truth. Truth is not subjective, and yet many in the world create their own reality and call it truth. I guess they might question how my thinking is not narrow if my view of truth is based on the words of a book written so long ago. Some do not see the Bible as authoritative or as the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God, but those living by God’s truth who seek His wisdom and His purpose for their lives understand they open themselves up to the greatest personal transformation humanly possible.
Those who want life a certain way think they are the only ones capable of choreographing life’s dance not only for themselves but also for everyone else. They want God on their own terms or not at all. Guided by the world and those in it, they seek the spotlight. They blame, criticize and judge others not only for the missteps they make but also for every step—right or wrong—those in their lives make. God might have a purpose and a plan for each of our lives, but so too do they. People who create their own truth ignore that God’s plan cannot be stopped. Those who manipulate the truth and draw others into their dance understand people do love a good story—true or not—especially when it is about someone else. Gossip is incessant and unconscionable in our world today. With our tongues Satan leads us exactly where he wants us to be. “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” (James 3:6, NIV) How easily the evil one traps us when we think change and transformation are necessary for everyone but ourselves.
The reality is every relationship in life is a dance not just that of married couples. Relationships fail for many reasons, but somewhere in that failure Satan lies in wait. Intent on stealing our peace and our joy, he and those manipulated by him want nothing to do with harmony. Satan likes chaos and brings it into both our personal and our professional relationships. He seeks to skew our view of reality, to convince us to follow him. He and those who choose his ways thrive on discord and conflict. Not one of us will ever get life right until we are unswerving and purposeful in our relationship with God. When God is absent, getting anything right is incredibly difficult especially when we believe we have our life and everyone else’s figured out.
How easily people disregard the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Not everyone knows Jesus personally nor do they desire that. Getting to know Jesus can be a difficult journey, and we live in a world in which people do not like making personal sacrifices. They do not like anything that is hard. I get it…I do not know very many people begging for trials to come their way, but those trials do have a purpose if only to make us turn to God…‘having to depend solely on God’ is what we all dread most. And, of course, that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things. That trouble goes far back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not turn to Him as long as he leaves us anything to turn to. I suppose all one can say is that it was bound to come. In judgment what else shall we have? Perhaps when those moments come they will feel happiest who have been forced (however unwillingly) to begin practicing it here on earth. It is good of Him to force us, but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time….(C.S. Lewis to Mary Willis Shelburne, 6 December 1955)
A life where everything is done with ease has no appeal for me. That limits our personal choices. Choices are a necessary part of our journey. We all take wrong turns. We open doors that should remain closed and close some that should remain open. We deny responsibility for our choices. We blame everyone but ourselves for our choices, and yes, we blame God. Make no mistake though, when necessary, God wrestles with us…think Jacob in the wilderness and the night-long battle that left him with a wrenched hip, but do not forget the blessings he received from God when morning came. As the night begins, Jacob has no relationship with God, but God forced Jacob into battle.(Genesis 32:22-32) I do not know if it was darkness within him that led Jacob to have this personal struggle with God, but I do know Jacob was alone. Everyone else was asleep. Those who have known aloneness in their greatest struggles understand God makes His presence known even to the most unwilling. He knows us better than we do ourselves. He created us in His image, so I imagine He knows what our individual maps look like and how well we are doing in revising those according to His purpose and plan for our individual lives. He wants all of us to get our maps right and our dance too. We should not only want that for ourselves, but also for everyone else encountered in our lives. God does not want any one of us to perish, and yet, humans take great pride in being barriers upon the paths others walk.
Our perspectives must change and our hearts too. We are all the least of these. (Matthew 25:31-46) It is only in full surrender to God that people cultivate with diligence and faithfulness the spiritual fruit He placed deeply within each one of us at the moment He created our inmost being…“the fruit the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”(Galatians 5:22) We know them. We quote them. We claim them, but how difficult are we working to develop them in ourselves if the only thing we see are the fruits lacking in others?
God could take the pain out of our lives and eliminate every struggle if He thought that best. However, there is power and purpose in every trial we face. We might not like that, but God is the One who created the world and everything in it. He knows exactly what each one of us needs; He knows our faults, our mistakes and our sins, and yet, He loves each one of us unconditionally even those “who once were far away [are] brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:13) He does not need our help and neither does anyone else, but we all need His. God redeems us. He calls us by name. We are His. (Isaiah 43:1) That means you, me, those we love, those we think are unworthy and undeserving and, yes, our enemies too. “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”(Luke 6:27-28) We have a responsibility to every person we meet upon the path God has designed for us, not only our families, our friends, but also our enemies, those with whom we share a pew in church, those with whom we share a workspace, those who serve us and those whom we serve.
No matter where we stand in our faith, we face difficulties, but God did not create us with the expectation that we do everything on our own. If He had, there would be no reason for Jesus and his death on the cross. We must keep God’s life-giving Spirit alive in us, and as we do, all those around us benefit even those who have difficulty forgiving us and those we find it difficult to forgive. When we accept that not all dances are going to be rhythmic and graceful, that some of us will get the steps wrong more often than not, our dance is made more beautiful, not because of anything we might do on our own, but because of God’s grace, His mercy, His love and His forgiveness. God will make all things new (Revelation 21:5). He calls each one of us to examine our past—not that we might dwell on it, but to learn from it. He wants us devoted to Him in our present circumstances. He asks us to look deeply within our hearts, the parts of us that keep us from forgiveness and unconditional love. God shows us who we are. He awakens us while all those around us sleep. There is no one to blame, no one to criticize, no one to judge. Everything God began; He will finish. “We can all be confident He will carry every good work He begins in us to completion until the day of Christ Jesus,” (Philippians 1:6, emphasis mine) All of us...
Choosing strife, bitterness, revenge and unforgiveness as their dance partners, I hear people say, “None of this is my fault. I do not need to be forgiven.” In most relationships that is not the reality of the situation, and even on those occasions when it is, imagine the physical, emotional and spiritual healing that comes to those who have personally encountered true darkness and evil and choose forgiveness…the adult, sexually abused as a child, the victims of rape in our society, the people among us who have been deceived and exploited, the parent whose child has been murdered—all of these and so many more. Yes, forgiveness can be difficult, but true forgiveness leads to complete healing, and it provides the path for us to love as Jesus loves. We are loved. We are forgiven. We are His. We must align our lives with God’s will and surrender completely to Him. Today seems the perfect day to do that and to share love and forgiveness with others.