Monday, January 14, 2008

I accomplished two things of varying importance.

First, I have now seen the inside of a transaxle—a small engine transmission that includes the axle. Do not ask me to put it back together.

Second, I have deactivated my Facebook account and feel oddly at ease and free. Once meant to be a tool, to keep in touch with friends at large, Facebook had slowly come to rest in my life as a monster, guilt-tripping me for not updating, not keeping up with wall posts, not reading others’ notes, overwhelming me whenever I logged in and regulating my relationships. It may be a temporary thing. I don’t know. It’s something I’ve wished to do for some time. Perhaps it is just me moving on. Perhaps it is just me expressing my restlessness. Perhaps it is the Lord removing a hindrance.

The relationship between Tabitha and me is like a door at which I once sniffed, seeing a light underneath and wishing to enter. Now it has swung open and I am curled on the rug by the hearth, enjoying the warmth and radiance of trust and vulnerability—where there is trust, the fear of vulnerability shrinks from a hulking devil to a whispering mouse. We shared the things that worry us, plague us and cause us sleepless nights. The frightening “what ifs” of girls struggling to keep their eyes on Jesus. Would God make me marry someone I don’t like? What if I miss the one He has for me—He makes it really clear and I just don’t see it? What if the wrong one asks? And things get really complicated when we let our imaginations conjure up all kinds of scenarios. What if I like one guy, and my dad likes another one and gives him permission to ask me, and then how am I supposed to know which one is the right one or if either of them are the right one, and what if I miss the right one because I’m so stressed trying to decide which one is the right one when the right one is somewhere else altogether? Voiced, these fears sound absolutely ridiculous. As if God’s will is a penny lying on the road that we might accidentally step over. Or worse, a magic trick, where we must pick a card, any card, just be sure it’s the right card! As we poured out our fears tonight—about her back, about our fellowship, about marriage and whatever other horrors plague the minds of young women—the Lord nudged me. “Look what I have wrought,” He pointed out. “You though I’d taken her friend when you moved. You thought I’d ended something beautiful. You were mistaken. It was only the beginning. Don’t I know best?” How could I ever worry about what He has in mind? One step at a time. One day at a time. Suddenly these frightening decisions resolve themselves. The darkness that we can’t peer into to see the future, becomes light around us as we proceed, and through the grace of the Lord and the truth of His word, they path is seen to be simple, straight and solid.

Lord, Thou bid me not to worry,
Yet caught up in my fear and hurry
I agonize and seek Thy will
For questions that are unasked, still.

But, Lord, there is enough to do
In every day Thou guides me through.
Thou wilt make my pathway straight
As I entrust my heart and wait.