I wonder if anyone else has been in the situation I find myself in on frequent occasions. That position being one of feeling torn. You want to go one way, but God has other ideas in mind. You think you have it all figured out and then you find out, you really don't have a clue. I wrote about it in the last blog, the one about the brakes going out in my car. Yeah, that was fun. But I am left wondering, when does God actually get really involved and when does He just let us go our own way for a while? I thought about this question last night and this morning and I suppose it all has to do with His timing.
When I went to Korea I went with the intention of staying three, maybe four years. I ended up living there for seven years. During that time I got to re-learn the idea of forgiveness and I got to kiss some proverbial asphalt as I hit rock bottom a couple of times. I do not relish the taste of asphalt, it can leave your teeth quite black and the taste is a bitch to get rid of. But God has a reason for everything, doesn't He.
I was in Korea for so long because I needed to learn what life was like living on one's own. I needed to learn responsibility and the reason behind God giving humans independent thought. I was living the life of a stupid sheep (insert 'redundant' definition here: stupid = sheep, they are mindless animals so there really is no need to mention the word "stupid" when describing a sheep. It's already implied.). The other thing to know about sheep is that they taste pretty good. Satan loves to eat sheep. If he can get us away from the flock, it's lamb-chops and mutton soup for dinner. But what if the sheep decides to grow into a ram? I think that is what I decided to do, or at least had to do in order to learn.
Let's go back a little ways to when I was in university. I became a Christian right before I started university, just after community college. I blame my sister for this. She drug me to this church in Virginia and then the next thing I know I am in a Pizza Hut giving my life to Christ. I could never go back to that Pizza Hut again after that because I knew I would probably start bawling and nobody likes wet pizza. But things did not go smoothly after I changed into a Christian. The pros were that not even being a year old I got to go on a missions' trip to Japan for a summer. I made a lot of new friends and got my fire insurance to boot. Seriously though, the cons of my decision could technically be viewed as pros, considering the long term effects of my decision to turn my life around. When one becomes a Christian, you basically give God the right to do open heart surgery...without the anesthesia. So you are not asleep and it hurts like a son-of-a...
Case in point: let's go back to the sheep metaphor. I followed the crowd. I thought that being a Christian meant you have to do what all the other Jesus freaks did. You modeled your life after theirs and became a cookie-cutter version of the Sunday morning social club. I was miserable. I would have my ups and downs and week after week I had this twist of knots in my stomach because I couldn't live up to the expectations that I thought were thrust upon me by those in my circle. Yes, my brothers and sisters in Christ protected me but that made me stunt my own growth. I would run in circles trying to be just like them but something was missing entirely from my core. It wasn't my relationship anymore, it was theirs. I wasn't unique, I was trying to be a copycat. I wanted their peace, I wanted their light, not taking into account how they got to where they were.
And this mindset, this emptiness, these stinking knots, I brought them with me to Korea. I remember when I first arrived in Korea. I woke up every morning doing a "quiet-time" with God. I would read my Bible, I found a church the first weekend, and I discovered Pandora's box. Wait a minute!! Back up the truck!! What was I thinking opening that box?! (Another side note: we all have a 'Pandora's box' in our lives. It's that area where we know we shouldn't go but curiosity gets the better of us and we go there anyway. And when people tell you not to open that box, it is better to listen to them and save yourself the torment of regret that is bound to come from opening it.) I got more than I bargained for and the asphalt that I was tasting from my time in college came back in my mouth during my years in Korea.
I found a new group of people to model my life after when I came to Seoul. And the cycle kept going until I realized something was still not right. I was still not unique and I was still a wannabe. So what was the defining moment? What made me change? Well, It was a gradual process. I literally hated myself and like always, I lashed out at others for trying to change me even though I wanted to change. But through it all, God was gentle. A little peace here, a lotta grace there... A whole lot more grace... Okay, a helluva lot MORE grace there. And it all boiled down to Him. The whispers and out-right spiritual two-by-fours all came in conjunction to what God was trying to tell me from the get-go. "I want you, only you. I want your individuality. I want your mess, I want your life. I am not happy you opened the box I told you not to open, but I can take that and work it to My design and desire for your life. I won't take away the consequences that you merited for opening the box, but I will help you through them."
So here I stand today. I am unique, I am a stand alone individual with unlimited potential. All the asphalt eating served a purpose. It was paved on the road that I had to travel down in order to get to where I am today. Living according to the expectations of others only drives us farther away from God's intended purpose for our lives. God sent quite a few individuals in my life to try and teach me this lesson, and believe it or not I was listening, I just wasn't putting it into practice.
Sometimes we have to take the long road to get to where we are going. And while God may not have liked for us to go the long way around, He does use it to fulfill His ultimate plan for having us in His life. We develop character along the way, and we have some nice battle scars to tell tales at the bars on occasion. But the bottom line is we each have an individual story to tell because we all have a different role to play in the grand scheme of God's plan.
I left some holes in my blog today on purpose. The details on my 'Pandora's box' are personal and are reserved for face to face meetings. And the lessons I learned on forgiveness are going to be left for another blog at an as yet unspecified date. In the meantime, I will let your minds wander to the most gruesome and dastardly assumptions imaginable as to what my "box's" contents entailed. It's probably not as bad as you think, or it could be worse if you live under a rock. But I will leave you with this snippet:
Once upon a time there was a little girl who was very sad. She was so overtaken by grief that she nearly drowned in a river. When all of a sudden a handsome man came out of nowhere and rescued the girl. The dashing prince wiped the eyes of the little girl and placed a ring upon her finger telling her that, "one day this ring will lead you to me." So overcome by the gorgeous young man the little girl vowed to become a prince herself one day, as she no longer wanted to be the damsel in distress...
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